Stressed? Better be with your best friend
Is your hair falling out? Is there another pimple on your face? And is your skin looking drawn and grey? If you answer yes to all these questions then there might be a simple reason: stress. Now that you know the reason, what is the solution? The Daily Mail has reported that a study conducted on children has found that the best way to combat stress is to spend time with your closest buddy during difficult times. The study adds that being in such company can reduce stress levels, and can help in uplifting one’s mood.
“One of the interesting things about these findings is that it’s not just any friend — it’s the best friend,” said Ryan Adams, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of paediatrics at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre.
During the study, 100 children aged 10 to 12 were asked to fill out a diary five times a day for four school days. They were asked to rate how they felt about what they had experienced in the past 20 minutes. They were also asked whether they’d been alone or with parents, siblings, a best friend, a boy or girl friend, classmates, strangers, teachers or some other person.
Then, saliva samples of the children were taken for measuring their stress hormone cortisol, a steroid hormone, produced by the adrenal gland and is released in response to stress. Researchers found that the presence of a best friend, more than anyone else, buffered the physical effects of a negative experience, so the child produced less cortisol. But when no friend was around during stressful times, cortisol levels shot up.
Although this study was conducted on children, experts say its findings are likely to be applicable on adults as well. IANS
Published in The Express Tribune, September 27th, 2011.
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There could be a different set of results for adults.Unlike adults, Children deal with stress rather differently. The moment you try to distract a distressed child, its easy for them to divert their attention. But adults deal with stress in a more complicated manner. It would be interesting to see how adults respond to similar experiment.
They should've specified how the candidates defined best friends. For example, were they friends when they needed them, or just the friends they were more in touch with, compared to others.