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Women & Stress
This is an accurate summary of an article to be published in
Psychological
Review :Psychol Rev 2000 Jul;107(3):411-29
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 finding that has turned 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, PhD, now an assistant professor of biobehavioral health at
Pennsylvania State University in State College and one of the study's
authors.
It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased
across the planet by saber-toothed tigers. Now the researchers suspect
that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or
flight." In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin
is released as part of the stress response in a woman, it buffers the
fight or flight response and encourages her 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 testosterone-which men produce in high levels when they're
under stress-seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin.
Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in
a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking
one day 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," says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they
holed up somewhere on their own. "I commented one day to fellow
researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on
males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly
that we were on to something."
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist
after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein
and 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.
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.
"There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live
longer." In one study, for example, 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 are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' 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 be leading a joyful life. In fact, the
results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having
close friend or confidante was as detrimental to your health as smoking or
carrying extra weight! And that's not all: When the researchers looked at
how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found
that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a
close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience
without any new physical impairment or permanent loss of vitality. Those
without friends were not always so fortunate.
Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our
life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life,
why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also
troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, PhD, coauthor of Best Friends:
The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers
Press, 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the
first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr.
Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner.
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's a very healing experience."
Virginia C. Wright, Ph.D.
University of Virginia
Staff Psychologist and Director of Training, Department of Student Health
Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatric Medicine
Department of Student Health/Center for Counseling and Psychological
Services
P.O. Box 800760
Charlottesville, VA 22908-0760
Phone: (434)243-5150
E-Mail:
vcw3a@v...
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