Mindfully Healing

Common drugs can give you a 5% better chance of winning at chess. Caffeine, modafinil and Ritalin can all make you better at chess, new research finds. The study shows that cognitive enhancers like these can boost performance even when someone is not tired. For the study 39 male chess players were given either caffeine, modafinil, Ritalin or a placebo. They then played time-limited games of chess against a powerful programme. Professor Klaus Lieb, who led the study, said: “We were surprised to see that players on the drugs played

What you should eat for the ‘most important meal of the day’. New research shows that eating a good breakfast — particularly one rich in protein — boosts a critical neurotransmitter, which may lower food cravings later in the day. The research comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that many teens skip breakfast and adolescent obesity has quadrupled in the last 30 years. Dr. Heather Leidy, an assistant professor of nutrition and exercise physiology who led the study, said: “Our research showed that people experience

3,961 people from 29 different studies were included in the analysis. Depression is more than a mental disorder, it affects the body’s ability to detoxify itself. It should be seen as a systematic disease that affects the whole body, argues a new study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Accepting that depression affects the whole body could help explain why people experiencing depression are more likely to suffer from cancer, cardiovascular disease and to die younger. All of these problems can be combated, however, by the usual treatments for depression: