Courtesy of TwitterAmanda MacMillan, SELF magazine

We've asked you to get #UpnOut with us. We've given you plenty of #JumpStartDiet tips, showered you with healthy recipes and even encouraged you to #TreatYoSelf. And through it all, we ask you to tell us about it on Twitter. And it's not just because we like to see our @SELFmagazine handle in your feeds (although we love that, too!). We do it because we've known for quite some time what the science is now starting to prove: It works!

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According to a new study published this week in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine, Twitter can be a valuable support tool for people trying to shed pounds. The study is one of the first to examine the social networking site as part of a larger weight-loss program.

Researchers from the University of South Carolina studied a group of 42 overweight men and women who had been given a weight-loss podcast subscription, a calorie-tracking app and a Twitter app on

Courtesy of PurellKate Sullivan, Allure magazine

They are prolific, disgusting, and phobia-inducing-yet they are also immunity builders. Below, some facts that will make you want to wash your hands immediately.

36 B.C.: Year Italian scholar Marcus Terentius Varro published a theory that swamps may breed illness because of "minute creatures that cannot be seen by the eyes."

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590: Year Pope Gregory I invented a post-sneeze prayer-"God bless you"-as sneezing was considered an early sign of the plague.

3: Number of times a day Henry VIII of England ordered that the walls and floors of his son Edward's rooms be washed to prevent illness. Edward died, likely of tuberculosis, at age 15.

18: Percentage of women who died in childbirth at a Viennese hospital in the seventeenth century. When Ignaz Semmelweis, an obstetrician there, made doctors wash their hands with chlorinated limewater before examining pregnant women, the mortality rate dropped to

Whether religious or not, many people consider ritual and tradition to be an important (and treasured) part of life. The word ritual has such a serious ring to it, but rituals can also be simple, comforting and fun. And now that we're past the distraction of the holidays, it's easier to think about ritual in its less-loaded, everyday form: the little things you can do each day, each week, or each season to insert a pause for reflection or appreciation. Rituals need not be time-consuming (or all that serious) to be special. As long as they're predictable and important to your family, they will be meaningful. Here are 7 ideas to consider. See if one resonates for you. - By Asha Dornfest

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Peter Ardito/Fitness MagazineBy Dana White

Going with your gut feelings is a good practice. Too bad I don't always like what mine are saying. When I'm stressed, nervous, or feeling down, my stomach pings and my insides churn. It's as if there's an E-ZPass lane connecting my brain and bowels, its sign flashing "Go, go, go." And I suddenly have to. Badly.

See, when it comes to mood, it's not all in your head -- it's in your gut, too. "The brain influences the digestive tract and vice versa," says Rebekah Gross, MD, a clinical gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Medical Center. In fact, new research has found that our esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon have a big say in how our minds and bodies function and how happy we feel. "The gut is a critical group of organs that we need to start paying more attention to," says Steven Lamm, MD, the author of No Guts, No Glory. "Doing so may be the secret to improving our overall wellness."

Related: The 10 Best Foods for Flat Abs

Inside Your Other Brain
If it seems

by Alanna Nuñez

FDA approves new IUDLast week, Bayer HealthCare announced the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of Skyla, a new, low-dose hormone intrauterine device (IUD) designed to prevent pregnancy for up to three years, the first of its kind to be approved in 12 years.

"This opens up the conversation," says Anita Nelson, M.D, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. "Before, the thinking was that women who've never had a baby should try other options or only get an IUD if they couldn't use the pill. This offers women another choice."

Skyla is designed specifically with young women who've never had a baby or given birth in mind: It's narrower and smaller than other IUDs, which makes placement in the uterus easier and less painful, and it contains a lower dose of hormones then even Mirena (currently the lowest-dose form of birth control on the market).

A trial of 1,432 women aged 18 to 35 saw a pregnancy rate over a three-year period of less than

The average American consumes a whopping 22 teaspoons of added sugar every day. Dr. Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, reveals the surprising places the sweet stuff is lurking, and how to cut back to the American Heart Association's recommended six teaspoons per day. By Ava Feuer, REDBOOK.

When you eat an entire bag of gummy bears, or down a large soda the movies, you're aware of what you're getting yourself into. But more than half of the sugar in our diets is strewn across the entire range of what we eat, put there by the food industry to make things taste, well, sweeter. And even if you're a careful reader of nutrition labels, you might never know it. "There are 56 names for sugar," says Dr. Lustig. "If you can figure out a way to have five or six different kinds of sugar in one product, then you can make some type of sugar fall further down the list. When you add them up, they add up to number one."

Tomato

By Elizabeth Sheer, Cheapism.com

Each year about one-third of American adults resolve to make their lives better in some way. For smokers, that often means a pledge to kick the habit. The benefits of quitting smoking are obvious: It's the best thing you can do for your health and for your budget. And with less tolerance for smoking all around, saying "no" could improve your social life, as well.

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Many would-be ex-smokers fail to quit smoking because it's hard to do. Quitnet reports that it takes seven tries, on average, for someone to successfully quit smoking. So make 2013 the year you pledge to give it up forever. And if you need an extra nudge, note that some of the best techniques for reaching this goal are absolutely free.

Quit smoking now with these frugal tips.

For starters, have you ever figured out just what this habit costs? A quick calculation at Quitnet, which entails entering your zip code and the number of cigarettes you smoke daily, tells you exactly how much of

Herbal Flu Season Tonic

From the perch of my bed, I like to watch a family of ravens that hang out atop a cypress tree that's about a block away. Last week, when a storm came through the city, my husband and I sat and watched as one brave raven continued to sit on his perch, facing into the wind, despite the constant battering. He was a brave bird. When it comes to flu season, I feel a lot like that bird. There's a constant battering going on: of commercials for flu products (honestly, taking a bunch of pills to suppress your symptoms and get back to work really isn't the answer!), of commercials for flu shots, of germs flying around, of everyone around me getting sick, and I'm just doing what I can to cling on to my health and sanity.

I read once, in a book by the herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner, about herbal 'antibiotics' and why they're so much more effective than chemical ones. Viruses mutate. Its a fact of life. You know what else mutates? Plants. Fact. So just as a virus can psychically pass on