I was shocked to recently learn of the horrible effects of slouching and bad posture. Tell me I'm not the only one that grew up with her mother telling her not to slouch. I have reason to believe that my mother didn't like me slouching for aesthetic reasons and how it reflected on her, but it turns out that whatever her motivation: good posture is good for you and bad posture is bad for you. 

Keep in mind that proper posture isn't really about standing up straight. The spine is curved so when your body is in proper alignment, your back will form a slight s-shape with a small curve near your neck and one at the lower spine. An s-shape is good, but a c-shape in your back is a sure sign that you are slouching. And the effects are actually pretty scary--I am not kidding you! Check yourself out right now and if you aren't standing or sitting correctly, make sure you do so you can avoid these terrible consequences.

I have a love/hate relationship with diet soda. I love it because I sometimes need the sweetness of a caffeine boost and I don't want the calories, but I hate it because I know that diet soda isn't much better for me than regular soda since even just drinking ONE diet soda a day can give you a higher risk of heart attack or stroke. Well, now it turns out that there's one other major side effect of saving your calories by drinking diet soda: a new study has found a link between drinking diet soda or diet fruit drinks and an increased risk of depression.

A new study is suggesting that if baby girls grow up in households with stressed-out moms, they're more likely to suffer from anxiety and other mental health problems as teenagers. While I'm not too surprised, I am fairly worried because I feel like I spend the majority of my day being stressed out about one thing or the other. That's why, I must say, I read the study's findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on Sunday, with some trepidation.

More than anything, I wanted to know what kind of stress the study was talking about because I feel like pretty much everyone I know is under a lot of stress on a regular basis. Turns out it's pretty much any kind of stress you can imagine: from parenting frustrations and marital friction to financial problems and depression.