i hate forwards. hate. i seldom ever read them. in fact, they generally bug me. i ignore every one from the "send it to 10 people in the next hour and your dreams will come true" to the warnings of car jackings and that everything that i own or consume will give me cancer. today i received a forward from my mom (that generally feels the same way i do about them) that made me pause and read it.
"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 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 blessed. sooooo let's appreciate our friendship with our girlfriends. evidently it's very good for our health."
for the record, i have no idea if this is true or not....but i sure hope it is. nothing makes me feel better than time spend with girlfriends and i *love* the idea that it could actually be healthy for me.....and the equivalent of a workout?! doubtful, but sign me up! what do you think?
