The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made during a classic “aha” moment shared by two women scientists talking 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. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. During this observation, they realized that nearly 90% of stress research is done on males. The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Soon, Drs. Laura Cousin Klein and Shelley 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.
The two doctors launched a study that has concluded that friendships are essential to a woman’s peace of mind. Based on over five decades of studying stress in men; the scientific community has believed that when people experience stress, it triggers a hormonal cascade that revs the body to go into fight or flight mode, an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers. Now these UCLA researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight. They found that a woman’s brain releases oxytocin, the same hormone that naturally induces labor and produces breast milk, when she encounters stress. Oxytocin buffers the fight or flight response and encourages women 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 the testosterone that men produce in high levels when they’re under stress seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. In contrast, estrogen seems to enhance it.
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. In one study 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 also help us live better. The famed Nurse’s 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 lead a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant that the researchers concluded not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight.
So if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, why is it so hard to make time to be with them? When we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing women tend to let go of is our friendships. 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 soothes our tumultuous inner world, fills the emotional gaps in our marriage, and helps us remember who we really are. It’s a very healing experience.
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