Good health with girlfriends

I got this email from a good friend today.  I couldn't agree more!!!  I surely do not know what I would do with the fabulous women in my life.

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 seratonin--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,
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.  : )