Compatibility on alcohol
may be vital in marriage
When it comes to drinking — as in so many other facets of marriage — compatibility may be key to keeping couples together.
Researchers reviewing data collected from 19,977 married couples in one county in Norway reported that spouses who consume about the same amount of alcohol were less likely to divorce than pairs where one partner is a heavy drinker and the other is not.
They found that divorce was generally more common in couples with high rates of alcohol consumption, 17.2 percent. But among couples where the wife reported being a heavy drinker and the husband a light drinker, the divorce rate was 26.8 percent; when the husband was the heavy drinker, the divorce rate was 13.1 percent.
Norwegian Institute of Public Health researcher Fartein Ask Torvik, the lead author of the study, speculated that drinking in women upended marriages for a couple of reasons. One reason, he noted in a statement, is that women seem to be affected more strongly by alcohol than men are — so their drinking could impair them, and add risk in a marriage, more than a man’s heavy drinking might. The team also wrote that drinking “may be judged as incompatible with female roles.”
Couples who both reported being light drinkers divorced just 5.8 percent of the time.
— Eryn Brown
Los Angeles Times
Hints from Heloise:
Hair dryer can help peel
labels for reuse of boxes
D.N. writes via email: When I get a cardboard shipping box that I want to reuse, I remove the shipping labels. Usually, just trying to peel the label will damage the box. I take the hair dryer, put it on high and heat the label. After a few seconds, the adhesive becomes soft, and the label peels off.
Heloise says: Wow and double wow! This hint was tested several times at Heloise Central, and it works like magic! We removed three different types of labels/stickers from a cardboard box, and they just peeled right off.
— King Features Syndicate
Runners top weight lifters
in losing excess pounds
People who want to lose weight are better off running than lifting weights — or even than doing both, researchers at Duke University say.
The researchers compared overweight or obese people who did aerobic exercise — running, swimming, walking, for instance — with those who did resistance training such as weight lifting and with people who did both. Those who got up and moved burned the most fat, they said in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: resistance training of three days a week or about 180 minutes; aerobic training of about 12 miles a week or about 133 minutes; or both.
The groups assigned to aerobic training and aerobic plus resistance training lost more weight than those who did just resistance training. The resistance training group gained weight due to an increase in lean body mass. The combination group lost weight and fat mass, but did not significantly reduce body mass.
“Balancing time commitments against health benefits, our study suggests that aerobic exercise is the best option for reducing fat mass and body mass,” said Cris A. Slentz, a Duke exercise physiologist and study co-author. “It’s not that resistance training isn’t good for you; it’s just not very good at burning fat.”
— Mary MacVean
Los Angeles Times