The selfish reason you should do something nice for your spouse today

Every day, anestimated6,800 new peer-reviewed academic articles are published. That’s a whole lot of science to wade through - but don’t fret. We’ll do the legwork for you, each and every morning.

Do an Act Of KindnessCompassionate acts help the giver as well as the receiver, University of Rochester researchers discovered.

A team of psychologists had 175 newlyweds keep a two-week diary tracking the times they put their partner’s needs before their own, and how they felt emotionally each day.

They discovered that performing acts of kindness boosted the doer’s wellbeing, even if the recipient didn’t explicitly acknowledge the acts.

In fact, the benefits for the doers were 45 percent greater than for the recipients.

Shake On Some More Salt?We’ve all heard it: Avoid too much salt to keep your blood pressure in check.

But recently, the reduce-your-sodium guidelines have become controversial, and a new paper further fuels the debate.

Despite previous recommendations to cut sodium to 2.3 grams (g) - or even below 1.5 g - a day, the researchers now say the threshold for sodium should be raised to 5 g a day or less, MedPage Today reports.

Still, the researchers acknowledge there’s no good scientific evidence supporting that target, so they emphasize their paper is really more a plea for more rigorous studies examining the issue.

Sleep SoundlyMelatonin supplements can help you sleep, but do you really know what you’re getting? Probably not, research from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests.

Most melatonin supplements don’t contain the amount of the drug listed on the label, the researchers found. Seventy-one percent failed to fall within a 10-percent margin - and one particular product contained 478 percent more than the label said it did.

When comparing labels, look for the “USP Verified” mark, which shows the supplement meets the requirements of the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention.

Stop SnifflingThere may be a long-term relief for your hay fever - but it may take years before you notice the benefits.

Scientists from Imperial College London discovered that a two-year course of immunotherapy is not long enough to achieve lasting symptom relief; three years of immunotherapy is necessary to improve hay fever long-term, they say.

Protect Yourself From the FluA flu shot might not be as protective if you have eczema, HealthDay reports.

When people with eczema received an intradermal flu vaccine—given with a much smaller needle into the skin, rather the muscle - only 11 percent of them developed protection against the flu, compared to 47 percent of those who received the injection into their muscles.

So if you have eczema, you may want to stick with the traditional, intramuscular shot.