They teach it 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 neurotran smitter 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 oing. 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 to schmooze 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 lucky. Sooooo let's toast to our
friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it's
 very good for our health."