- A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women
are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe
our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and
help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.
-
- Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends
can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us
experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women
respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make
and maintain friendships with other women.
- It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of
stress research---most of it on men---upside down. "Until this study
was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience
- stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the
body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains
Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral
Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's
an ancient
- survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased
across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
-
- Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger
behavioral
- repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In
fact," says Dr. Klein,"it
- seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part
of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight"
response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women
instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies
suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and
produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men",
says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone---which men produce in high
levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin.
Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."
-
- The discovery that women respond to stress differently
than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women
scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this
joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came
in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein. "When
the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented
one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress
research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of
us knew instantly that we were onto something."
-
- The women cleared their schedules and started meeting
with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very
quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in
stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women
respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for
our health.
-
- It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the
ways that
- oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang
out with other
- women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed
by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men.
Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease
by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's
no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live."
In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends
increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study,
those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death
by more than 60%. Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses'
Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women
had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they
aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life.
-
- In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers
concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental
to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight! And that's not all!
When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the
death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest
stressor of all, those women who had a close friend confidante were more
likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or
permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.
Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our
life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life,
why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that
also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of "Best
Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three
Rivers Press, 1998).
-
- "Every time we get overly busy with work and family,
the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women,"
explains Dr. Josselson."We push them right to the back burner. That's
really a
- mistake because women are such a source of strength to
each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space
in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're
with other women. It's a very healing experience."
-
- Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald,
T. L., Gurung,
- R.A.R., & Updegraff, J. A. "Female Responses
to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight", Psychological
Review, 107(3), 41-429.
|
