UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN By Gale Berkowitz

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special.They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe ourtumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that spending time with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience ona daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that hasturned five decades of stress research, most of it on men, upside down.
"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 Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor ofBiobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study'sauthors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time wewere chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioralrepertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr. Klein, "itseems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stressresponses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response andencourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead.When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studiessuggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stressand produces a calming effect.
"This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "becausetestosterone, which men produce in high levels when they're understress, seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds,"seems to enhance it."
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men wasmade in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who weretalking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when thewomen who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned thelab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein." When the men werestressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day tofellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress researchis on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knewinstantly that we were onto something." The women cleared theirschedules and started meeting with one scientist after another fromvarious research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylordiscovered that by notincluding women n stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake:The fact that women respond to stress differently than men hassignificant implications for our health.
It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways thatoxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with otherwomen, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein andTaylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study afterstudy has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by loweringblood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," saysDr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live." In one study, for example,researchers found that people who had no friends increased their riskof death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the mostfriends 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 Studyfrom Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, theless likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, andthe more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, theresults were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not havingclose friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health assmoking or carrying extra weight!
And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the womenfunctioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in theface of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a closefriend confidante were more likely to survive the experience without anynew physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those withoutfriends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stressthat seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep ushealthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find timeto be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcherRuthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perilsof Girls and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). "Every timewe get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go offriendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. "We push themright to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women aresuch a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And weneed to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind oftalk that women do when they're with other women.It's a very healing experience."
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T.L.,Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress:Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight. Psychological Review, 2000.