Random Friday: Women's Health Edition

Regular readers may be aware that I have a love/hate relationship with women's health and fitness magazines. Like when we had a recent giveaway featuring a fitness magazine? I spent half the post bitching about the cover. This is a great way to attract more blog sponsors and giveaway offers in the future. Way to market the blog, Crabby! Hey, PR folks, come to Cranky Fitness where your clients can offer up free stuff in exchange for ridicule!

However, for all their faults, there's one thing that keeps me coming back over and over again to these frustrating magazines: somehow they manage to dig up all kinds of research tidbits and tips that I've missed. How can this be? Every week I devote hours and hours to scholarly research about health topics random web surfing, yet these folks always seem to find interesting studies that I haven't seen. Is it possible they have access to real scientific journals that I'm too cheap to subscribe to? Or do they just make this sh*t up?

However they do it, it's the motivation for me to plow my way past pages of filler like "How to Find Your Most Flattering Lip Shade." (My trick: I just rely on the last beverage I've consumed. Works fine for cabernet or pomegranate juice; alas, not so great for green smoothies).

So since I already spent the subscription money, how 'bout if I share some of the news finds from the latest edition of Women's Health?

For example, do you know what physiological phenomenon happens naturally to men between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., and how you can take advantage of it?

First off, though, a warning.



Printed copies of magazines can not hyperlink to their sources without defying the laws of physics. And they're not crazy about ugly footnotes either. So often there's no mention of where they found these studies. Do their editorial standards require something half-way reliable? Let's hope so, because here we go!

What I Learned from the September Issue of Women's Health:

A low glycemic diet can help acne sufferers.

Brunettes can carry a gene variant that dramatically increases risk for melanoma; it's not just blonds and red-heads who have to watch out.

Acute short term stress that eases up quickly can actually be good for you, boosting immunity and reducing the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimers. (The theory is that it puts your body into "repair mode.")

Apigenin, a flavonoid found in parsley, celery, and red wine may lower the risk of ovarian cancer.

Need to talk to a guy? Men listen best between 4-6pm, because that's the time when their testosterone levels tend to dip.

Eighty-three percent of meals at tested at 17 big chain restaurants contained more than a days worth of sodium.

Drinking green tea helps prevent gum disease.

A combination of prebiotics and probiotics can reduce symptoms of ulcerative colitis.

You are now allowed to wear white after labor day.

Forty one percent of Americans never check their pantries for recalled food. (And so almost 60 percent do? Reeeealllly?)

Getting sufficient calcium can help you lose weight.

Eating food in a blue-colored room acts as an appetite suppressant.

And finally, the "Guy Next Door" has advice for how you should shave your pubic hair to keep your guy "interested." And heck, this strikes me as so freakishly intrusive and infuriating unusual and offbeat, I thought I'd quote it in full!

"Start with a trimmed-down triangle. After a few weeks, whack it down to a landing strip. Then wait for a special occasion and take it all off. Wait a while, then let the grass grow back the same way it came off--start with a strip, then allow it to gradually fluff up and widen out."

And don't thank me, thank Women's Health!

Return of the Friday Giveaway!

Yes, it's time to haul out the rusty-dusty random number generator out of the Cranky Fitness basement, and put it to good use. This week, we have a subscription to Fitness Magazine and an accompanying Prize Pack to give away!

If something about that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because our pal MizFit just did the exact same giveaway. So if you didn't win over there, perhaps it was because you were really meant to win over here!

And speaking of the awesome MizFit, she is part of a panel today at the Blogher conference in Chicago. If you are lucky enough to be at the conference, and silly enough to be reading Cranky Fitness when you could be off stalking your favorite bloggers and scoring free swag, networking and learning, then close up your laptop right now and scoot on over to hear her! It's called “Blogs and Body Image: What Are We Teaching Our Kids?” and it happens Friday (today) from 1:15-2:30.

But if you, like me, are at home feeling insanely jealous instead of hanging out with the cool kids in Chicago, then check this out: you can still benefit from the panel's awesomeness, because they are forming a new blog about body image issues. It's called "We Are The Real Deal." Besides Carla (MizFit), they've got Kate Harding, Heather from MamaVision, Roni from Roni's Weigh, and Claire Mysko! Talk about an all-star lineup.

Oh and speaking of giveaways, the Juice has a $200 Patagonia gift card up for grabs. And while you're over there, Kyra Sedgwick talks about Going Green, Org Junkie tells you how to greenify your makeup, as well as how to bring order into the chaos of recycling. And what did I whine about this week? Camping trips!

Anyway, so another reason Fitness Magazine might sound familiar is that the one of our favorite fitness role models, Jody over at Truth 2 Being Fit, posted what I thought was one the cleverest quick-but-tough workouts ever. She combines just two exercises into an intense routine that works pretty much every muscle in your body in just a few minutes. And that's where I discovered that the Fitness magazine website has exercise demonstration videos!

For more on the magazine and how you can win a subscription and other goodies, please join us for the giveaway over at the Cranky Fitness Product Page!