Sitting down for a good chat with her favorite girl friend seems to promote a womens health and mood according to a new study by University of Michigan. Levels of the hormone progesterone increate with feelings of emotional closeness and other social interactions the researcher found. Progesterone is believed to help boost a woman's health, overall well-being and alleviate anxiety and stress levels.

Investigators led by principal author Stephanie Brown checked the saliva of 160 female college students so the could  compare the link between interpersonal closeness and progesterone levels as well as the stress hormone cortisol.

The procedure involved randomly assigning partners to teams of women who were then asked to perform a series of tasks which were aimed at creating emotional closeness or a task that was deemed to be emotional neutral for twenty minutes. After the task was completed, the women played a computerized cooperative card game a with their partners. The researchers checked their progesterone and cortisol levels before and after the tasks.

The investigators discovered that the levels of progesterone in the women who took part in the emotionally close task remained the same or were elevated, however, the women whp participated in the emotionally neutral tasks demonstrated the decreased levels of the hormone. The cortisol levels remained constant regardless of the activities the women participated in.

The women returned for the second part of an experiment, one week later, to play a computerized card game with their original partners once again. Following the game they were tested for progesterone and cortisol once more. The women were also asked how willing they would be to risk their life for their partner. The investigators found that the women with increased progesterone levels were more likely to predict a willingness to say they would risk their lives for their partners.

The study is published in the June issue of the journal Hormones and Behavior.