Sometimes a break from the guys is very welcome. You and your girlfriends can get together, catch up and have a great time.

You don't have to fly miles away, it could be a trip that is just a few minutes from the house.

These adventures can be fun and relaxing, and they can help improve your health, according to science.

So, don't brush off plans by your friends to get together and go out to have a great time. Spending time with friends is very healthy, based on findings made from several studies.

Friends As Medicine

The study was done at Brigham Young University in Utah, and it involved 308,000 people.

One of the shocking findings of this study was that people without close friends risked premature death.

So, when you feel like your life has lost meaning because you are away from your friends, it really has on some level.

As a matter of fact, not having friends was discovered to be as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Friendship, the study found, helped relieve stress. And stress, as you are probably aware, is responsible for several types of mental and physical health issues.

Throughout life, stressful events happen and having people you can depend on to help you out during such times can help offload some of these burdens.

"As we encounter stressful events in our lives, if we know that we've got people we can count on or that we can turn to, we may be less likely to even perceive it as stressful, because we know we can handle it."

Additionally, according to Julianne Holt-Lunstad "… our relationships can also help us cope with it and buffer that reaction to the stress."

A Trip Can Improve Your Mental Health

Although your physical health benefits from having friends, your mental health does as well.

This was proven in a different study that focused on social connections. According to this study, friendships improved the levels of oxycontin in the brain, which is the "happy hormone." This same hormone is released in the body when cuddling.

Additionally, the hormone has been discovered to make us more trusting, friendly, and empathetic. To top it off, it also helps relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety.

So, taking a girls' trip can improve your health substantially.

That is why you should make sure you and your girls get together and have a good time every once in a while.

So, take that vacation you have been putting off, it's long overdue. You know it will be lots of fun, and as we have just seen, it will improve your mental and physical health substantially.