Health: Mood News.(body weight, relationships)

MOOD news

Fear of Fat

Chubby, corpulent, obese: Such words set off alarms in a womanis brain, but not a manis. Shigeto Yamawaki and his colleagues at Hiroshima University in Japan scanned people's brains as words flashed on a screen. Although men and women both rated terms relating to being overweight as negative, their brains responded to them quite differently. In men, the medial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with rational thinking, lit up. Among the women, the amygdala, which processes emotional threat, reacted uniquely. The reasons aren't clear, but Yamawaki says that women's neural processing of these concepts may help explain why they're more prone than men to eating disorders.

25%

of employees have taken a day off from work to cope with stress.

Contact High

Sex aside, a close physical relationship with a partner boosts a woman's health. In a study headed by Kathleen C. Light, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, certain forms of touch were linked with raised levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin and lower blood pressure in women. The 59 subjects had been married or in a relationship for at least six months. The women who reported the most hugging and massaging in their life (more than once a day) had the highest oxytocin and lowest blood pressure ...