Round-Up: Five Interesting Health Stories From This Week

Marriage Reappraisal –> Marital Satisfaction (via Northwestern University News Center)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, psychologists from Northwestern and Stanford published a study showing the benefits of relationship reappraisal in protecting marriages.  It sounds wonky, but the concept of reappraisal is overwhelmingly simple: it’s the ability to observe a phenomenon as if from a distance or neutral perspective.  Here’s the 21-minute (per year) intervention participants did…

Every four months for a year, participants were asked to take seven minutes to think about the biggest disagreement they had experienced with their spouse during the last four months.  They were then asked to write about it from three different angles:

• Write from the perspective of a neutral and objective third-party who wishes to bring out the best out in the situation
• Write about any obstacles they foresee coming up when attempting to take a neutral, third-party stance in disagreements with their partners
• Write about how they might best go about adopting this neutral, third-party perspective in future disagreements and how this kind of perspective could help them transform disagreements into more positive experiences

And bingo, study participants reported better feelings of love, intimacy, trust, passion and commitment than their non-reappraising counterparts.  Worth 21 minutes a year?  I vote yes.

Four Workouts Might Just Be the Magic Number (via The New York Times)

photo by fang guo, via flickr creative commons

Gretchen Reynolds from The New York Times reported on a study published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine.  The study investigated 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to three exercise groups: 2 workouts/week, 4 workouts/week, and 6 workouts/week. While all three groups gained strength and endurance and lost body fat, the 4X/week group expended more energy (burned more calories per day) than the 2X/week group and the 6X/week group.  Why the difference?  Researchers concluded that the 6X/week participants were more likely to spend their non-exercise time sitting and resting than the other groups.  So what’s the net takeaway?  Exercise as much as you can and want to if you can keep your energy levels high through the day (avoid getting tired or slow).  But if you find yourself getting lazy after workouts, it might be worth it to dial back total weekly workouts and walk/bike/move more in your everyday life!

Marcus Antebi Aims to Own Juicing Category (via Well + Good NYC)

photo by plasticrevolver via flickr creative commons

Juicing and cleansing are all the rage right now, and the founder of Juice Press, Marcus Antebi, wants to be out in front.  A former Thai boxer, Antebi has expanded from one store in New York City’s East Village in 2010 to what will be 10 by the end of this spring.  Beyond opening stores, he’s out preaching about nutrition, “saving New Yorkers from dairy-induced digestion issues and Five Guys food comas,” as Well + Good NYC reported.  He’s got big ambitions, but he’s going up against Starbucks’ Evolution Fresh.  And at $60/day, the benefits of his juice better be as loud as his marketing campaign if he’s going to own the category.

Mark Parker, CEO of Nike on Body-Controlled Music (via Fast Company)

Fast Company reporter Austin Carr covers Nike’s digital future in this month’s “Most Innovative Companies” issue.   Parker shares clues about how Nike will catapult out of apparel to broaden its offerings to include tech, data and services.  It’s going to encourage start-ups to build on the Nike+ platform, and if FuelBand usage continues to increase, it will have tons of data to help motivate people wearing the sleek black device.  Nike and Parker are dreaming big: “Just imagine if your body could control or change the music that you’re listening to–if your movement could actually change the cadence of the music, the tempo, or the beat.”  From my perspective, the coolest part about these goals is the potential for Nike to transform itself from a shoe company to a wellness machine.  Time will tell…

Mountain Dew for Breakfast (eeeeeew) (via Huffington Post)

Pepsi pushed the unhealthy breakfast to a new limit Tuesday, announcing a new breakfast drink called Kickstart.  It tastes like Mountain Dew but is made with 5 percent juice, vitamins B and C, and caffeine.  According to Pepsi’s research, the drink emerged from market research saying that Mountain Dew fans “didn’t see anything that fit their [morning drink] needs.” My take?  A little more caffeine in the shape of something real (coffee or tea) beats a can full of chemicals any day.  Just when I thought the end of soda might be nearer, it’s positioning itself at the breakfast table.  [Sigh]

This is a new type of post I’m trying out, since I find myself coming across too many interesting things during the week to cover them all in depth.  I catalogue them as I see them and then write a Friday digest.  What do you think of this format?  Helpful?  Too long?  Too short?  Too recycled?  I’d love any feedback!