|
By 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 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 increase d 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 t o 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
(Back)
|
