| How many good friends do you have? A breakthrough UCLA research study, suggests that your answer to this question affects your health and happiness! It may not surprise you to know that people experience less symptoms from stress and live longer when they share their life stressors with their friends.
“There was a joke in the UCLA research center that when the women who worked on the study were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded,” says Dr. Laura Cousion Klein, PhD one of the study's authors. “When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own.”
In a country where women outlive men, this is a significant finding. “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 Dr. Klein. 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 a woman is caring for children or befriending other women, it buffers her fight or flight response and allows her to relax and de-stress.
“There's no doubt,” says Dr. Klein, “that friends are helping women live longer.” “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 people 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 was as much a detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!
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