10/29/2010

My sister-in-law Alexandra sent this to me and I couldn't agree more so I thought I'd share.

Subject: A thought to share

a thought to share... I like this...

Someone had 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, 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 or sister, 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/sisters.
Evidently it's very good for our health.