HEALTH ADVICE
They Teach It at Stanford
“I just finished taking 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.”
Recommend0 recommendationsPublished in Senior Health
So very true…I was pleasantly surprised at how supportive ,friendly and selfless many of the women here on chatters are…so cheers to all women…
interestng fy2….I am to nmod one of the friendliest groups of people I’ve met from all corners of the world… 🙂
Very good health advice ,woman have a good support group ,other woman .
Wow, such a controversial subject, for me at least. Marriage without stress? That’s a novel idea.
I wish I had a transcript of that lecture. I don’t understand how that speaker can come up to that conclusion for a man.
LOL davidrv
I agree nmod and debz – the women on this site are amazing women and I am so glad they came into my life 🙂
Thank you for posting this forever, It is just so true, if its in real life or cyber space, love my friends here. Working as a medical receptionist, we try to treat the whole person, not just eyes, stop work and listen when our mainly senior patients talk about personal things, they are our extended family and we love them and it works, they come in sad and go out with a smile, sisterhood is very important to health. xxxx
Yes forever they are right…there is absolutely nothing like sharing laughter or tears with a good friend..usually a woman …but sometimes men can be in the equation…we were never designed to be an island….we were made for fellowship.Thanks for sharing…..
xxxx M