r e b o r n

I usually don’t read forwarded messages in my inbox, but this really caught my eye. It’s basically about this Standford student who was in a lecture about the mind-body connection and the relationship between stress and disease. The professor states that the best thing that a man could do for this health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do was to nurture her relationship with her girlfriends.

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.

So let’s toast to our 
friendship with our girlfriends. <3