Tales of girlfriends

I got this email from my sis in law and hardly ever to email fwds but I loved this one, and am too lazy right now to write a real blog, so wanted to post it.  Please read it, as I feel it is so true.  I have very few girlfriends who I love and trust with all of my heart, but it is true that these relationships are good for your health and so important to have!  To my girls, you know who you are.. this is for you!

 They Teach It at Stanford

"I  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/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."