Calling Your Mom May Relieve Stress

Study explains why calling mom may relieve daughter's stress.
USA Today (5/12, Szabo) reported, "When mothers soothe their children, levels of hormones involved with love and trust surge, and stress hormones plummet. Now, for the first time, a study" published May 12 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences "shows that just a mother's voice can set off the same chemical cascade."
"For the study, researchers asked 61 girls, ages 7 to 12, to give a speech or do math problems in front of an audience, a surefire way to make a kid stressed," CNN /Health.com (5/12, Harding) reported. "Afterward, roughly one-third of the girls were reunited with their mothers, who hugged and soothed them for 15 minutes. Another third spoke to their mothers on the phone for 15 minutes," while the remaining group watched a film judged to be neutral in emotional tone. Both before and after the stressful event, all groups had had saliva tests taken measuring cortisol levels.
HealthDay (5/12, Mozes) reported, "According to scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, stressed-out daughters experienced an equally significant drop in levels of the stress hormone cortisol after exposure to either their mother's touch or her voice." Meanwhile, "either form of maternal intervention appeared to prompt a simultaneous jump in levels of the so-called 'love hormone' oxytocin, the researchers found." In other words, "both phone and in-person maternal contact produced an equally substantial and enduring reprieve from stress and anxiety among the girls."
BBC News (5/12), the UK's Telegraph (5/12, Gammell), and the UK's Guardian (5/12, Meikle) also covered the story.