Sea Crest Health Care Center

Is it a question of “Beauty OR Brains” that influences one’s success in the work force?

New research conducted by Timothy Judge, PhD, a management professor at the University of Florida, suggests replacing that “OR” with an “AND.” His research appears in the May issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

Attractiveness will definitely be integral to your landing jobs, but one’s intelligence quotient gives one the edge when climbing the salary ladder.

“Little is known about why there are income disparities between the good-looking and the not-so-good-looking. We’ve found that even accounting for intelligence, a person’s feeling of self-worth is enhanced by how attractive they are, and this in turn, results in higher pay.”

Judge and his team analyzed data from the Harvard Study of Health and Life Quality. 191 men and women between the ages of 25 and 75, each interviewed three times, six months apart beginning in 1995, answered queries about household income, financial strain, education, and also evaluated how happy or disappointed they were with their achievements up to that time. After completing several intelligence and cognitive tests to gauge mental ability they had their photographs taken.

Scientific researchers averaged the results of six ratings of each person’s attractiveness, relative to their age and gender.

Significantly, the researchers found that physical attractiveness had a significant impact not only on how much people got paid, but how educated they were and how they evaluated themselves. They found that people who were rated as good-looking made more money, were better educated, and more confident.

But a person’s intelligence affected their income more than their looks did.

“We can be somewhat heartened by the fact that the effects of general intelligence on income were stronger than those of facial attractiveness,” Judge and colleagues write. “It turns out that the
brainy are not necessarily at a disadvantage to the beautiful, and if one possesses intelligence and good looks, then all the better.”

It became readily apparent that good-looking people do tend to highly assess their worth and capabilities, which may lead to less financial stress and more money.

“Moreover, the effects of self-concept are particularly noteworthy. Its effects on income are stronger than those of attractiveness and nearly as strong as those of intelligence. The influence of core self-evaluations on both income and financial strain underlines the critical role it can play in both objective and subjective life success,” the researchers say.

Validation is not just a feel-good exercise, but a key ingredient to the successful life.

Love it when the  different passions of my life converge and… beg for a creative solution.

Fashion, the Health Care Universe and Marketing all came together in Lucette Lagnado’s article in The Wall St. Journal. So Doctors and Hospitals still haven’t whipped up an all-encompassing solution to the dressing gown we all love to hate… Aside from making me smile, I’m gonna whip Ad Lib Unlimited’s   designers into a designing frenzy to come up with a sharp “cover-up” that should cover all bases.

Read full article at WSJ.com.

So we gals thought we had an inherent biological superiority when it came to longevity. It now appears that women, though likely to live longer than men, are are up to two and a half times more likely to suffer from disabilities

Researchers at the Duke University Medical Center found that women, 65 and over, are more likely to suffer arthritis and obesity which account for up to 48% of the gender gap in disability, and most often, loss of their independence in their old age.

“The reason for this discrepancy in disability has not been well understood, but we found that chronic health conditions that women experience in greater numbers than men may explain part of that gap,” says Harvey Jay Cohen, MD, senior author of the study and director of Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

Women have a natural tendency to gain more weight than men over their life span, but they may be more motivated to work harder to maintain a healthy weight “if they realize that those extra pounds make it more likely that they will be disabled in later years, potentially becoming a burden to their children or requiring a nursing home.”

Just when you think you’ve got the healthy eating thing down right, some scientific papers come out to upend your sense of equilibrium.

While you’ve been vigilant in pursuing “healthy” options in your food purchases, you and millions of others are being “played” by the less scrupulous in the food industry.

Melinda Beck, in her comprehensive article, “The Fine Print: What’s Really in a Lot of ‘Healthy’ Foods” in the May 5th Wall St. Journal, provides far too many instances of manufacturers determination and success at fooling a well-intentioned but easily misguided public.

Chicken: Roughly one-third of the fresh chicken sold in the U.S. is “plumped” with water, salt and sometimes a seaweed extract called carrageenan that helps it retain the added water- and are allowed by The U.S. Department of Agriculture to label it “all natural” or “100% natural” because those are all natural ingredients, even though they aren’t naturally found in chicken.

The “plumped” chicken has between 200 and 400 mgs of sodium per serving, almost as much as a serving of fast-food french fries. And marketers attest to blind taste tests to underline the reality that more consumers prefer these “enhanced” versions.

Salt substitutes: Many contain potassium chloride, which can exacerbate kidney problems and interact badly with some heart and liver medications- not exactly the direction you wanted to take when looking for the alternative to salt.

Artificial Sweeteners: Many brands of Sugar-free gum, mint and candy contain sorbitol, a plant extract that isn’t completely absorbed by the body and works as a natural laxative. That’s why you often experience bloating, flatulence, stomach pains and diarrhea after consuming only one pack of gum, or sucking on a few sugar-free candies. Some diabetics and others who are sensitive to the effect, find that sugar alcohols, i.e maltitol and xylitol can raise their blood sugar.

Trans fat, Cholesterol- Free, Calories-Free: Manufacturers are allowed to “round down” their numbers when it comes to trans fat, “sugar-free,” “calorie free” and “cholesterol-free” labels….! Products labeled zero grams of trans fat can have up to 0.49 gram of fat per serving. You could still be consuming significant amounts of trans fat: if the ingredients include partially hydrogenated oil, hydrogenated oil or shortening, a product isn’t completely trans-fat free. And it may have considerable saturated fat as well. And foods that have trace calories and up to 0.49 gram of fat and carbohydrates per serving- can, yes, be labeled “free” of those properties!

Super Water: The Center for Science in the Public Interest states that drinks — with names like “defense,” “rescue,” “energy” and “endurance” — are mainly sugar water with 125 calories per bottle…

Government surveys show that most Americans aren’t deficient in many of the vitamins supplied in these drinks, and the excess gets excreted anyway. Coca-Cola Co. was sued earlier this year over claims on its Vitamin Water beverages.

Consumers had better be armed with a “HEALTHY” DOSE OF REALISM WHEN SEARCHING FOR THAT PERFECT HEALTHY FOOD.