Independent Perspective News - The advantages of a special relationship

According to American scientists, friendship helps women reduce stress, overcome hard times and even lower heart diseases risk. The secret lies in a hormone: oxitocine.

A women gathering can last hours. The never-ending conversation has no silences because the issues are endless: loves, hates, parents, children, obligations, tests, plans, clothes. Everything is important. And everything is shared, even tears, hugs and laughs. Everybody knows friendship among women is special, but now we also know it can lower stress and enhance life quality.

This conclusion was reached by a group of researchers form the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), who published the report "Feminine responses to stress: taking care of and building friendships, not fighting or escaping". The title may sound a little odd, but it can be explained. For almost 50 a theory was sustained assuring that in a stressful situation people could only fight or escape. And that such behavior is a biological response of the organism. But now it has been discovered that these attitudes are masculine, and that women react in the opposite way: they get closer to their beloved ones, their children or their friends.

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This explains why in a stressful situation women resort to other women, and why the talk they have becomes a balm and a source of health. The opposite happens among men. "Men react to stress with hypertension, aggressive behavior, alcohol or drug abuse", explains Shelley Taylor, another one of the authors of the study. And she adds, "This feminine behavior can also account for the fact that women live seven and a half years more than men".

Klein talks about other pieces of research that proved that feminine friendship reduces cholesterol, high pressure and heart diseases, "A study assures that those who have no friendships are in a higher risk of dying within a six-month period. And another piece of research has shown that those who have a large number of friendships reduced their death risk in more than 60% within a nine-month period", she says.

The Health Study of Nurses of the Harvard Medicine School is world-wide famous. It started in 1976 to know the long-term effects of contraceptive pills and continued to follow all subjects of feminine health. It is carried out every two years, when they send forms to almost 200.000 nurses in the United States.

In 2000 a study on "Social nets and life quality" assured that "the more friendships women have, the lesser their chances are to develop old-age ailments and the greater their possibilities to enjoy their life". And it was concluded that "not having close friendships or confidants is as harmful as tobacco consumption or overweight". Another evaluation made in the same study, based on women who survived breast cancer, detected that their life quality was much higher if they belong to social groups.

"Lonely people are more prone to depression, illnesses and death than those who have friends and belong to social circles. Doubtlessly, friendship enhances mood and life quality", states Gustavo Lipovetsky, head of Psychiatry of the Neurosciences Institute of Buenos Aires. And he adds, "Women need to talk, to exchange and share their experiences with other women, which is something unusual among men. And this stems from the relationship that is built between mothers and their daughters".

The chosen sister

"If the relationship between two women entails trust and loving prevails over hostility, such relationship has a positive effect on health", agrees psychologist Perla Pilewski, from the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association.

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Women share their intimacy with their friend: everything, from their fantasies to their sorrows. A woman friend is a sister another woman chooses".

"A woman can much easily overcome a loss if they have a friend. A friend is a savior, she'll be there whatever the circumstance, she will listen to you cry, she relieves your suffering and gives advise". Close friends seem to be, then, a very effective natural antidote to live a longer and better life.