Sea Crest Health Care Center

I am admittedly not the trendiest girl around.  I don’t have designer shoes or a luxury car or get my hair blown out.  Actually, where I live getting your hair blown out means you drove with a window open, but I don’t do that much either.  The NYC crowd would have a field day with how un-cool I am with my suburban clothes and addiction to Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee.  I am about as mainstream as they come, and for this I am generally unapologetic.  It’s who I am and I’m OK with that.

Although un-hip, I am quite interested in doing things to keep myself and my family healthy.  I try mightily to get my children to willingly eat vegetables. I don’t cook red meat. I choose fresh ingredients rather than food-in-a-box whenever possible.  I am embarking on an experiment to be a vegetarian, and I recently gave up caffeine for a month.  I am willing to try new things – within reason.

There was a recent article in the New York Times about the popularity of a fermented tea drink called kombucha.  Apparently this tea can do all kinds of magical things like re-growing hair, calming digestive issues and curing hangovers.  Those who drink it claim that it is quite delish.  Sounds good, right?  I’m in! I could be the first one in the suburbs to partake of this delightful elixir!  How do I get it?

This is where things get a little hairy for me.  Because kombucha is made by immersing a disk of bacteria into brewed tea and letting it sit, unrefrigerated, for up to two weeks.

A disk of bacteria.

In your tea.

On purpose.

I am so not down with that.

I understand the benefits of probiotics.  I eat yogurt (from the refrigerator, thank you very much).  But, I have to admit that I wouldn’t even drink the plain tea if it sat out for two weeks – and the introduction of the bacteria disk into the equation does nothing to improve the situation for me.

I suppose the nature of kombucha is essentially similar to beer.  Fermented substances in a drink are not that uncommon.  And yet, I can’t quite get my head around voluntarily introducing bacteria into a completely acceptable drink like tea.  I guess I don’t brew my own beer either, although I do enjoy drinking it.

There are packaged versions of kombucha available, including one made by Red Bull.  I am slightly more comfortable with the manufactured versions, mostly because I work under the assumption that beverage manufacturers are as terrified of being sued as I am of dying of kombucha poisoning.

I am a big sucker for slick marketing and putting anything, even something utterly disgusting, in a pretty bottle and giving it a fun name goes a long way to drawing my interest.  If I actually went out and purchased a Carpe Diem Kombucha, it would be an ultimate marking success for them.

Ooooo…pretty bottle….fancy name…who cares what’s in it?  I must have it!

I want to be cool and brave enough to jump on this bandwagon and give kombucha a try.  But the reality is that it’s probably beyond my capabilities to be that cool and brave.  And the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is working just fine for me, thanks!

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.

The staff sat expectantly around the conference table as I pressed the YouTube link to Britain’s Got Talent. “What’s Ruthy doing now?” was surely the predominant cognitive thread… Obvious emotion filled the room as they watched Susan Boyle upend the world with her other-wordly voice… And as outraged as they were at the sneers and cynicism evinced by smug audience members at the sight of the plain-Jane, ungainly elderly woman (was she really only in her forties?), they could not honestly separate their pre-conceived negative expectations, and later, amazement , upon hearing the beatific voice emerge.

We may not be proud of it, but all of us are subject to a whole host of factors influencing our responses to people and the objects we introduce to our lives. Scientists have long categorized the elements of universally perceived beauty, and libraries are filled with our less than laudable embrace of the visually pleasing over the simple and unattractive.

And what happens when a remarkable sensation explodes on the zeitgeist of millions of people around the world-probably one of the most prolific viral emails ever? Does she remain as visually unremarkable and we, as a society learn to love her- gray, frizzy hair and all?

Not a chance! Marketers got a hold of her real quickly, and cognizant that her future was linked to her marketability, launched the new and repackaged talent—new hairdo, clothes and all- to an adoring, receptive world!

View YouTube Video

The “New Frugality” is the behavioral response of Americans to the the nearly $13 trillion loss of wealth since the recession began; their upended confidence in the capitalist system is kick-starting a more cogent move toward frugality. Economists believe that this severe downturn will seriously rewire our mindset and real spending habits in the future, way after the economy finds its equilibrium.

The severity of this downturn may deeply reverberate. “It’s the contagion effect,” Mr. Dhar says, the same reaction that makes people travel less after a plane crash, or those who lived through the Great Depression conserve tin foil for decades. “The longer this lasts, the more it will have an impact on people’s long-term behavior,” he said. On top of that, getting credit is likely to be tougher for some consumers in the next decade than it was during the subprime-lending boom of just a few years ago.

“It’s hard to believe we’re ever going back to the easy credit and free spending of the last 10 years,” said economist Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley. He anticipates consumer spending will grow at an inflation-adjusted 2% to 2.5% annual rate in the next few years, compared with 3.5% in the decade ended in 2007.

A survey by AlixPartners, a business-advisory firm, found Americans plan to save 14% of their total earnings once the recession ends. Fred Crawford, the group’s chief executive, said even if that number is “inflated by the emotions of the day,” companies must “understand and plan for what could be a ‘new normal.’ ” Two-thirds of those surveyed said they plan to buy less in the future, while more than half plan to buy less-expensive things.

You think so? Americans are noteworthy for our poor memories, short attention spans, and insatiable desire for a quick fix. Sure, the pain is real, but will we revert to our free- spending ways when the good times roll?

That’s the behavioral quandary marketers of products must ponder. Do you create products for a new frugality or assume our lust for luxury will be the fulcrum of future success?

Had more fun this morning than a human being has a right to! This as- stressed- as -anyone-else advertising, marketing person, (forget about it being days before Passover!), returning from an early, intensive session of aerobics and serious Spin , espied some beautiful grandchildren being given a shower. Still trying to get my heartbeat back to normal, and sweating profusely, I looked at the shower, then at the delicious children, and then back at the shower. My daughter was keenly watching her known-to-be-bazaar mother, and was too slow to restrain me…”Bobbo’s going to join you, guys!” I cried, and whipping off my omnipresent hat, but keeping all my clothes on, jumped into the tub under the most refreshing shower burst I’ve ever had. The other children and members of the household came running in to witness the hullabaloo…Their faces were a marvelous amalgam of absolute delight and frissons of excitement at this sight of their grandmother, fully clothed, in the shower with some very naked grandchildren! I laughed like I hadn’t in a million years! I’ve been smiling like a goofball all morning at the office… What a great recession buster all out joy with the family can be!

Some days start off better than others. An inveterate recipient of medical and pharmaceutical RSS feeds and real time alerts from a myriad of medical sources, I’m often hit with a phalanx of “cease and desists” regarding any number of personal idiosyncrasies. Many, of course, hit me in the proverbial stomach: stop consuming proteins and carbs , throw out those wonderfully expendable aluminum pans, stop reaching for that cold remedy you always secretly thought caused your heart palpitations…

Today is glorious. Not only should I continue my consistent consumption of coffee, but I will concurrently ward off the demons of dementia!

Dr. Miia Kivipelto, an associate professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and lead author of a newly released study tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.

Their observational study concluded that subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. (Those who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.)

Now if they could just keep the calories down on my flavored mocha-chinos…

by Ruth Folger Weiss

Add this to your  “it’s nice to know” file:

Physical warmth impacts on how we view other people and, creates a causal scenario where we then treat the other person in a warm or cold fashion.

To ascertain how temperature affects emotions, Lawrence Williams, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and John A. Bargh, PhD, professor of psychology at Yale University conducted a study on undergraduates.

Students were  casually asked to hold  a tester’s  cup of coffee for a moment prior to entering a room;  half the participants were asked to hold a cup of warm coffee and half were asked to hold a cup of iced coffee.

The students were   subsequently given a portfolio of information  on an unknown person described with words like intelligent, skillful, industrious, practical, and cautious. They were then asked to respond to a questionnaire evaluating the person’s personality. Interestingly, those who had held the warm coffee were much more likely to score the  “person in question”  as warmer than those who had held the iced coffee.

“It appears that the effect of physical temperature is not just on how we see others, it affects our own behavior as well,” Bargh says. “Physical warmth can make us see others as warmer people, but also cause us to be warmer — more generous and trusting .”

In the boardroom and in your social life, never underestimate the importance of  an outreached hand, especially when it’s a warm one!