We already know that beer does a body good, but you can’t have alcohol without food, so ditch that late night pizza and indulge some late night chocolate instead.

Here’s why:

Chocolate is good for your heart.

A bar of chocolate helps lower your blood pressure and cholesterol AND reduces your risk of heart disease. Start thinking about these things now, so in 40 years that’s at least two less pills you’ll have to be popping.

Chocolate stimulates endorphins and serotonin.

Endorphins are hormones that give us a sense of pleasure. They’re allegedly released when we exercise (I’m skeptical), and also when we have sex (this, I can believe). Eating chocolate also has the same effect. Serotonin is a natural antidepressant, which may help to explain why we ladies crave chocolate so much when we’re premenstrual.

Chocolate is rich in antioxidants.

Antioxidants are crucial for killing off free radicals that roam around your body trying to wreak havoc on your cells. Cacao, the base substance of chocolate, contains 8 times as many antioxidants as strawberries. (New diet plan: chocolate covered strawberries all the time. Hello, 100th birthday!)

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Maybe you’ve been too busy organizing your notebooks for the new semester, but the season of winter is here. For some of you, that means hot cocoa, the opportunity to wear your cute knit hat, and general jolliness all around. But for others, it means the return of unwanted feelings like depression, pessimism, and exhaustion.

It’s normal to feel a bit less enthusiastic about life when the freezing cold weather starts to make walking to class a serious chore, not to mention a safety hazard (I have slipped on ice and fallen on my ass in front of people waaay too many times). But if you think your case of the winter blues is more intense than your friends’, you might have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a mood disorder believed to be caused by the lack of sunlight during the winter months. Read More »

Antidepressants are supposed to make us happier—but are they actually doing the opposite? According to researcher Helen Fisher, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants may alter brain chemistry in a way that zaps desire to find a mate and dulls the euphoria felt when people fall in love—a process that Fisher calls “temporary insanity.”

I’m sure anyone who’s been in love would not hesitate to agree with that description. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people on antidepressants began them after the breakup. I can’t help but wonder…since the prescription of anti-depressants has more than doubled in the past 30 years, perhaps we should be asking what came first—the chicken or the egg? Read More »