Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Power of Women Therapy!

They Teach It at Stanford
A recent Stanford 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."




7 comments:

Christal said...

Shouldn't you have ended that with "...In the name of Jesus Christ......AAAAMMMMEEEENNNNN!!!!" I love you to bits and pieces, Stephanie. Thanks for being such a wonderful friend in every sense of the word!

Patty Ward said...

Ditto.

Jennae said...

I love your blog. It always makes me smile.

Donna's Next Chapter Art said...

It increased my serotonin just to see the photos of my dear friends! It is so true about the differences between the guys and the girls when it comes to relationships.

Bdaddy said...

I would have found this entry more interesting if there had been more sports talk, info about tools, or details about how to make fire.

The Dooley Family said...

SO sweet! I love it! :o)

Lori said...

I loved this post! and HA! HA! Christal and Bradley. Too funny. Red is one of your colors Stephanie!