Mindfulness Meditation Offers Real Pain Relief; Not a Placebo Mindfulness meditation, used for pain management in various cultures for centuries, has long been thought to work by activating the placebo response. However, a 2024 study from University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers showed that this appears not to be the case: the practice engages separate neural pathways from the well-documented “placebo effect.”…
Research Suggests We’re Passing “Peak Obesity”; Weight-Loss Drugs Are Likely Reason By Thierry Malleret, economist GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are a remarkable example of health and tech innovation that seems to be leading to a stunning reversal in obesity rates. New data shows an unprecedented decline in obesity levels, which fell about 2 percentage points between 2020 and 2023. The new study used weight and height…
Catching Up on Sleep on Weekends Associated With 20% Lower Risk of Heart Disease A study presented at the 2024 European Society of Cardiology meeting examined data from 90,903 adults in the UK Biobank project, a database holding medical and lifestyle records of 500,000 people in the UK. Of these, 19,816 met the criteria for being sleep deprived. Over a follow-up period of 14 years, the…
Workplace Wellness Is Unwell—Companies Must Refocus on Fair Pay and Livable Hours By Thierry Malleret, economist In 2022, $51 billion was spent globally on workplace wellness programs (according to the GWI, in measures ranging from apps to counseling). Yet, the global workforce seems never to have been so unhappy, unhealthy, and unwell. According to a recent Gallup report, employees’ stress has reached unprecedented levels, with…
Research Dive: Per Capita Spending on Wellness Around the World GWI’s 2024 report, The Global Wellness Economy: Country Rankings (2019-2022), provides two different sets of country rankings. When we look at overall wellness economy size, the countries that come out on top tend to be countries with very large overall economies and populations: the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. However, when we…
Work Stress Linked to 97% Increased Risk of Irregular Heart Rhythm (AFib) A 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that adults in white-collar jobs with high job strain and for whom significant efforts are met with low rewards (such as low salary or recognition) may face a 97% increased risk for developing the irregular heart rhythm condition known as atrial fibrillation…
