If someone were to ask you how to be healthy, you would know the answer: exercise regularly and eat right. Matter of fact, I bet you’d be able to tell them exactly what foods to eat, what to avoid, and which physical exercises promote physical strength and stamina. Am I right? Most of us know (whether we follow it or not) the components of good health and how to attain it.
But our bodies are just a part of the story. Our emotional well-being is just as critical as our physical health. What we put into our mind is equally as important as what we put into our body. And nurturing our spirit is part of that. In fact, scientists and doctors are now beginning to realize what most women (and many men) have intuitively known for centuries: that for great overall health, we need to find ways to de-stress and connect emotionally and spiritually with others on a regular basis.
Someone recently emailed me the following article, and I want to share it with you. So ladies, no more guilt about those GNO’s! And guys, maybe you should try talking about your feelings more – show a little emotion! It’s good for your health! Read on….
They Teach It at Stanford, by Sharon Rose
from the March 2011 newsletter of The Business & Professional Women of Nevada County
In 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.
