Ladies Only

Girlfriends..Stanford U. Study
 In an evening class at Stanford the last lecture was on the
mind-body connection - the relationship between stress and disease.The
speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things,
that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be
married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she
could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her
girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide
support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult
life experiences. Physically this quality *girlfriend time" helps us
to create more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat
depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share
feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They
rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain
things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes.
Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf?
Yes. But their feelings? Rarely.

Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with
our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health.
He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our
general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we
are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out
with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively
engaged-not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain
quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our
physical health as smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just
pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something
good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo let's
toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good
for our health.