As the new year has commenced, so have the diets and heavy gym going. But there could be one thing sabotaging your diet and you don't even know it! If you've had problems losing weight in the past because you end up giving in to temptation, blame fructose! Fructose is a common sugar found in lots of sweet drinks and foods, and now a study shows it actually rewires your brain, causing you to overeat.

Scientists found that consuming fructose can make changes in the brain causing us to overeat. The reason? It keeps us from feeling full as opposed to regular sugar, which does. Overconsumption of sugar is a big problem in the U.S and the study may reveal the cause of our obesity epidemic.

In the aftermath of the unspeakeable tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, everybody wants to know what made shooter Adam Lanza kill 26 people with whom he doesn't seem to have any connections at all. There's been talk of him suffering from some sort of mental illness, but outside of those who knew him saying he was "awkward" and "introverted," not much has been given as proof. According to The Associated Press, his parents 2009 divorce documents don't give out too much information regarding his mental state either. 

The divorce mediator did reveal that Nancy Lanza told her she didn't like leaving her son Adam alone and that she would take care of him for as long as needed. 

We can debate how stricter gun control laws might have prevented the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School until we're blue in the face, but the reality is that we need to be talking about another issue: mental health, which most of have been ignoring for way too long. The reality of raising and living with a child with mental illness in no walk in the park--as exposed in a poignant and eye-opening article written by the mom of a teen son currently dealing with this issue that has gone viral in the wake of the elementary school massacre. 

I first learned about Liza Long, a single mother of four, through one of my Facebook friends earlier today. As soon as I read her very personal post, I had to stop and re-analyze everything I had been thinking about Friday's Sandy Hook killing spree. 

Have you ever had that nightmare where you're lying in a coffin, alive? Or the one where you fall into a grave? Call me morbid, but I've always heard that these are pretty common dreams. Well, now a coffin producer in the Ukraine thought that it might be a good idea to make these nightmares a reality. He's invented something that he's calling "coffin therapy", in which people pay him $25 for 15 minutes of laying inside of a coffin to get used to the idea of dying. Okay, how WEIRD is that?!

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. 

No matter how you look at Elisa Bauer's case, there's no denying there's no easy answer to her dilemma. Elisa is a disabled 32-year-old woman who has the mental capacity of a 6-year-old, suffers from epileptic seizures and is 12 weeks pregnant. Her parents--who are her legal guardians and, as such, are in charge of all health care decisions pertaining their daughter--want to make sure a Reno judge doesn't require her to get an abortion. According to Amy and William Bauer, who adopted Elisa from Costa Rica when she was a child, not only does their daughter not want to have an abortion, but such a practice is also against their Catholic religious beliefs.

But the concern--and the reason Elisa's fate is in the hands of a judge--is the risks this pregnancy can bring to Elisa's already compromised health considering her history of life-threatening seizures. 

Everyone feels bored at one point or another. Maybe your kids are at camp and your husband's off fishing with his buddies and you thought you'd enjoy the time alone, but then there's nothing to do. Maybe you had plans with friends but then everyone had to cancel for whatever reason, and now you're bored out of your mind. Well, it turns out that that boredom is actually doing a LOT more harm than you might think!

Generally when you hear the word stroke, you think of a medical condition that only affects older people. But what's scary is that now it seems to be affecting the young crowd and it may all be due to our terrible lifestyles! Dr. Brett Kissela, professor and vice-chair of neurology at the University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine, started the study because he was noticing that the age ranges of people being admitted to his hospital with strokes were getting younger and younger.

Documented sources showed that the average stroke age was 71 in 1993 and 1994, but has significantly declined as people ages 55 and younger who have experienced a stroke spiked to 19% in 2005, compared to 13% in the early 90's. Kissela hopes that younger people take note from these findings and make sure they see a doctor to learn ways to prevent strokes from happening.