Depression

I like comfort food. You like comfort food. It's great medicine! You feel rotten, so you eat a bunch of rotten food, and you feel better. Magic!

Yeah, I know, it's short-lived, but General Tso's Chicken, or Haagen Dazs ice cream, or an entire sleeve of Oreos, sure helps get the sad out.

But eating all that comfort food, i.e. junk food, might be what's fueling your bad mood; specifically increasing the risk of depression.

There is a prevailing assumption that depressed people have a more difficult time dropping pounds than their non-depressed counterparts.

While it seems logical enough, a recent study shows that this is not the case. Here are the details:

I'm a clinically depressed, overly-intense, bipolar nut job. I'm a disaster! But, I'm also a Yogi--no, not like the cartoon bear--I practice Yoga regularly.

And, you should too! It's not just cliché, it really does calm you down, at least for a little while.

New research supports two of the claims surrounding Yoga's health benefits: improving mood and decreasing lower back pain.

We also LOVE to eat! And now new research claims watching all this death and destruction may actually cause us to consume MORE than we already do.

If you're feeling a bit down - maybe you need to laugh more. "If you're laughing with a group of other people, fake laughter very quickly becomes real," he said. "It's part of the social phenomenon."

The benefits of exercise are many - and here is yet another good reason to get out and work your body: A single 30-minute walk on a treadmill can give a temporary emotional lift to patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, the results of a small study suggest.