Tend and Befriend instead of Fight or Flight

Deb -- thought you would find this interesting. Dan is here (asleep in the guest room).

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN
>
>By Gale Berkowitz
> A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are
> special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They
>soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our
>marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way,
>they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out
> with our friends can actually counteract the kind of
> stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis.
>
> A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with
>a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain
> friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has
>turned five decades of stress research--most of it on
>men--upside down.
>
> "Until this study was published, scientists generally believed
>that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal
> cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as
>fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, PhD, now an
> Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State
>University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient
> survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across
> the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
> Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral
>repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr.
> Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as
> part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or
> flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather
> with other women instead. When she actually engages in this
>tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is
> released, which further counters stress and produces a calming
> effect. This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr.
> Klein," because testosterone--which men produce in high levels
>when they're under stress--seems to reduce the effects of
> oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."
>
>The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men
> was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women
> scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was
> this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were
> stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded",
> says Dr. Klein." When the men were stressed, they holed up
> somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher
> Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on
>males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew
>instantly that we were onto something."
>
> The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one
> scientist after another from various research specialties. Very
> quickly, Drs.Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including
>women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The
> fact that women respond to stress differently than men has
>significant implications for our health. It may take some time
> for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages
> us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the
> "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may
> explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has
>found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering
> blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol.
>
> "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us
>live." In one study, for example, researchers found that people
> who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month
> period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a
> 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.
>
> Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health
> Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends
>women had, the less likely they were to develop physical
> impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be
> leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant,
> the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or
>confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or
>carrying extra weight!
>And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women
> functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the
> face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend
> confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new
> physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without
>friends were not always so fortunate.
>
> Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so
> much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add
> years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with
> them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen
>Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of "Best Friends: The Pleasures and
>Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press,
> 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the
> first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women,"
> explains Dr. Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner.
>That's really a mistake because women are such a source of
> strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to
> have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of
> talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very
> healing experience."
>
> Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis,B. P., Gruenewald, T. L.,
> Gurung, R.A.R., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). "Female Responses to
> Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight", Psychological
> Review, 107(3), 41-429.
>