found this on the internet , don't know if its new or old, interesting nonetheless


This UCLA study is a fascinating look at the strength women derived from
relationships with other women. Because of the potential for "healing
experiences," women are strongly urged not to let family or work get in the
way of maintaining friendships with other women. Since stress research has
heretofore concentrated primarily on males, this new work will be of great
interest to women of all ages.
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UCLA Study On Friendship Among Women

An alternative to fight or flight Gale Berkowitz

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 Cousin 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 release 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 longer. 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 confidants 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 and 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, 199. The
following paragraph is, in my opinion, very, very true and something all
women should be aware of and NOT put our female friends on the back burners.
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.