Feeling sad? Eat fat or exercise

It's been irrefutably established in the boardroom, barroom, classroom, and bedroom as well as hundreds of research facilities. Alcohol reduces anxiety, inhibition, feelings of guilt, and lowers alertness. Caffeine increases alertness, but can increase anxiety and inappropriate behavior, especially in children and teenagers.

So the idea that consuming certain solid foods can affect mood really shouldn't be hard to digest, though the degree to which this occurs could cause an upset stomach, heartburn or the eventual need to diet.

Research published last year in the Journal of Clinical Investigation found a way to reduce the feeling of sadness by 50 percent. Eat foods with a high fatty acid content, like macaroni and cheese, ice cream, or mashed potatoes slathered in butter.

According to an article posted at Medical News Today, the researchers from the University of Leuven in Belgium deduced this in a rather clever way. Instead of having the 12 healthy subjects of normal weight eat fatty or non-fatty foods, they fed them through a feeding tube.

Some subjects received an infusion of fatty acid; the others, a saline solution.

Prior to this, the subjects listened to music and viewed images considered either sad or neutral. During this period, the subjects were questioned on their state of hunger and mood multiple times.

After the infusion, they were asked about their hunger and mood again.

After the intravenous feeding, levels of sadness were 50 percent lower in those who had received the fatty acid infusion when compared to those who had just been given saline.

This finding is noteworthy because it alters a perception. Before this study, many assumed that it was the act of eating along with the texture of what we call comfort food that created the sense of well-being, but Giovanni Cizza, MD and a co-author of the study, believes otherwise.

"There must be a way in which the gut talks to the brain [because] the areas of the brain that get activated or suppressed as a result of emotion and mood were impacted by fatty acid emulsion," Cizza said.

The Belgian study lends credence to another released just weeks prior to it online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that gave a scientific reason for why we like fatty foods. When such foods were fed to rats in a laboratory setting, UC Irvine researchers found that the rats' stomach produced something that neither sugar nor protein produced.

Endocannabinoids.

That's, like, close to marijuana, dude, and human stomachs produce the same.

Endocannabinoids are natural compounds produced in mammals that are closely related to the active ingredients in cannabis, the ingredient found in hemp that gives marijuana its mind-altering affect.

Researchers feel that the fact that our bodies react to digesting fat by producing a chemical that compels us to eat more is a holdover from our caveman days. Back then, overeating after a kill was necessary.

Not only did meat quickly spoil, but there was also no guarantee that the hunting during the following few days would be successful.

Unfortunately, while times have changed our physiology hasn't. Tempting, fatty foods can be accessed easily when driving, shopping, or entertaining yourself whether it be by watching sporting event at a stadium, a movie at the theater, or a television show in your living room.

Without a doubt, consuming copious amounts of fat because it stimulates the production of a marijuana-like chemical in your own body that elevates your mood makes you crave more is a surefire way to get fat, but related research brings into question just how permanent that good mood will last.

A six-year study of 12,000 people performed in Spain suggests that unless the fat being consumed is considered "good" fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat, eating fat could make you depressed or worse. In this study, the use of trans fat, seen as the worst type of "bad" fat, increased the risk of depression by 48 percent.

The use of olive oil, often touted as the best of the good monounsaturated fats, corresponded with a 35 percent reduced chance in developing mental illness. Lluis Serra Majem, one of the researchers at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, shared with Natural Health in its July/August issue of 2011 the reason why. Olive oil is loaded with polyphenols., an antioxidant that has anti-inflammatory properties.

Fortunately, if would like to naturally improve your mood, you do not have have eat fat to produce endocannabinoids. Exercise does the same as well.

For years, scientists thought that endorphins a substance the body can produce that is similar chemically to opiate drugs like morphine were what produced the exercise effect first called the "runner's high." The problem with that theory is that subsequent research revealed that the endorphin molecules are too large to enter the brain through the blood; therefore, another chemical must be responsible.

2003 research performed at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that 50 minutes of moderately intense exercise either on a treadmill or an exercise bike produced endocannabinoids and that they affect the brain because the molecules are small enough to cross what's called the blood-brain barrier.