It's Proven! Friendship IS Really Good For You

A landmark study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that causes them to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned 5 decades of stress research upside down. Friendship has also been shown to reduce blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol, helping us to live longer and live better. Diet and exercise will only get you so far it seems.... :=)

Scientists have generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that prepares the body to either fight, or to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. You’ve probably heard of this before – it’s called the ‘fight or flight’ response, and it’s an ancient mechanism left over from when we were hunters. However since 2000 it has been discovered that women have a larger behavioural repertoire than just fight or flight.

As in many areas of science, this was stumbled upon by accident one day…..The female authors of the study (Shelley Taylor and Laura Klein) were chatting one day in the lab at UCLA about how to cope with stress. They had noticed than when their male colleagues were stressed they went off somewhere on their own, whereas the women would make coffee, have a chat and tidy up the lab. They subsequently discovered that 90% of the stress research carried out had been done on men. It’s been found since that women react differently.

When women are stressed they release the hormone oxytocin as part of the stress response, and this buffers the fight or flight response encouraging her, for example, to gather with other women and tend to children. Researchers have called this the ‘tend and befriend’ response. Through tending and befriending, more oxytocin is released which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men who produce high levels of testosterone when stressed. Testosterone has been shown to reduce the levels of oxytocin, whereas estrogen (produced by women) enhances it.

But friendship helps both men and women to live longer and live better. In a survey carried out on Australians over the age of 70, scientists discovered that friendships increased life span much more than frequent contact with children or other family members. This held true even if the friends moved to another city.  According to the Australian study, the ability to have relationships with people to whom you are important has a positive effect on physical and mental health. Stress and the tendency toward depression are reduced, and behaviours that are damaging to health (like smoking and heavy drinking) occur less frequently.  Friendship has been found to reduce heart disease, lower blood pressure and reduce stomach problems. In older men higher levels of interleukin-6 (which signals an increased risk of heart disease) are found in those who have no friends.

So gentlemen, now if your girlfriend or wife really needs a 'Girls' Night Out' you’ll know that it really is ‘hormonal’, and ladies, when your husband or boyfriend wants to go out with the boys, you know it’s helping lower their interleukin-6 levels. Friends are thus officially now worth their weight in gold!


References:

S.E. Taylor, L.D. Klein et al. ‘Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, not Fight or Flight.” Psychological Review, 2000, volume 107, 411-429

D.C. Geary and M.V. Flinn. ‘Sex Differences in Behavioural and Hormonal Response to Social Threat: Commentary on Taylor et al.’ Psychological Review, 2002, volume 109, pages 745-753.

L.C. Giles, G.F. Glonek et al. ‘Effects of Social Networks on 10 Year Survival in Very Old Australians: The Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging.’ Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2005, volume 59, pages 574-579.