Hot MedFax

Well, this is encouraging.  Did you know that when your partner is under stress , you gain weight? Really.  Isn't that depressing?  But according to a new study, older adults gain weight when a spouse is stressed out. Oh my.  A new University of Michigan study looked at how the negative quality of marriage can be detrimental for weight gain—possibly leading to obesity—when couples 50 and older are stressed. The results varied by gender, newswise.com reports. The study specifically focused on chronic stress, which is an ongoing circumstance occurring for more than a year and threatens to overwhelm an individual's resources, such as financial problems, difficulties at work or long-term care-giving. The sample included 2,042 married individuals who completed questions about their waist circumference, negative marriage quality, stress levels and other factors in 2006 and 2010. Couples were married for an average of 34 years. Greater negative quality ...

Guess what the key to a http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/662562/?sc=dwhp good team is?  Design it around their learning style. That's according to a new study, as reported at newswise.com.  Past research on collective problem-solving has come to conflicting conclusions. Some studies have found that people collaborate best when they can communicate with all other group members, emailing or meeting to exchange ideas continuously. Other studies have found that working in smaller subgroups is better, with each member communicating closely with a few neighbors. Striking the right balance between exploration (searching for new ideas) and exploitation (taking an idea and running with it) requires matching a particular group’s social learning style with the right type of network, the study finds. I used to be in teams when I worked at a Fortune 500 company where everybody was pretty much a propellorhead and I was the one doodling in the margins.  Safe to say,...

I think we're all pretty much sick of politics (I know I am).  But experts are now saying that political skills are important to leadership . Leaders skilled at influencing others may be happier at work, according to a Kansas State University researcher, as reported at newswise.com. Andrew Wefald, associate professor in the Staley School of Leadership Studies , says political skill — the ability to build connections, foster trust and influence other people — is a fundamental quality of a transformational leader and being good at it can increase job satisfaction and engagement. "Most people think of political skills as manipulative and negative but, basically, it is building connections with other people," Wefald says. "In a positive sense, politically skilled people foster supportive and trusting environments to benefit organizations and are going to be more transformational leaders, which will lead to higher job satisfaction." Building connection...

I've never had much use for it (though I do admit I like watching it on TV, the calming soft voices and the beautiful landscapes).  And plenty of business deals have been solidified on the course.  But golf to me is a boring sport. However, it may be time to rethink this.  Studies are finding that you golf, you live.  Longer, that is.  Golf has been shown to increase life expectancy .  Research conducted by Scotland's University of Edinburgh suggests golf can help your cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic health, according to CNN.  "We know that the moderate physical activity that golf provides increases life expectancy," the cable TV network quotes Dr. Andrew Murray, lead researcher at the university's Golf & Health Project . "It can help prevent and treat more than 40 major chronic diseases such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, breast and colon cancer.   "Given that the sport can be played by the very young to the ver...

If you're a woman, you're far more likely to get derailed long-term in your career than a man. Don't get mad at me. That's what a new study says.  It's not so much what you'd expect -- us leaving the work force to have children, then trying to get back in - as it's that old nasty thing -- gender bias .  And that old, be nice to everyone cliche. I thought we got rid of that with the real possibility (please, God) that a woman is going to become president. But it seems gender bias is alive and well. In the study University of Florida management professor Joyce Bono examined a phenomenon called managerial derailment, where a seemingly up-and-coming manager gets fired, demoted, or doesn’t advance as expected. She found that supervisors can have subtle, even subconscious differences in expectations for the behavior of male and female managers, which can have costly consequences for women in the workplace, most notably the loss of mentorship, accor...

Here's your question for today: are you a jerk ? Jerk self-knowledge is hard to come by, says Eric Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, according to newswise.com. Schwitzgebel posited a Theory of Jerks in Aeon Magazine in 2014 and has revisited the topic a few times in his blog, “The Splintered Mind.” He continues that exploration this month in an article titled “How to Tell If You’re a Jerk,” and today blogged a five-question quiz to help determine personal levels of what he refers to as “jerkitude.” Schwitzgebel defines a jerk as “someone who culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or fools to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic (validated) peers. The jerk faces special obstacles to self-knowledge of his moral character, partly because of his disregard of the opinions of people who could give him useful critical feedback.” Hmm, sound...

Well, not for me.  Years ago, when we were first dating, a woman I know told me never to marry someone who hated what he did. Unfortunately, I did, because I loved him, but over 30 years with a man who violently hates what he does (he's a dentist) has made my life, well, if not unhealthy, then extremely hellish! A new study has found that if your spouse is happy, you will be healthy.   Newswise.com reports that having a happy spouse could be good for your health, at least among middle-aged and older adults, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. In a nationally representative study of 1,981 middle-age heterosexual couples, researchers found that people with happy spouses were much more likely to report better health over time. This occurred above and beyond the person’s own happiness, according to the study. “This finding significantly broadens assumptions about the relationship between happiness and health, suggesting a uni...