Quit smoking. Improve your mood

Many smokers reach for a cigarette to ease their anxiety during stressful periods. But US researchers have found that quitting smoking makes people happier, and the effect lasts for as long as they manage to kick the habit.

The team from Brown University and the University of Southern California said it showed quitting is not, as many smokers fear, a psychological sacrifice made for the sake of their physical health.

Study author Christopher Kahler from Brown University said: 'If people quit smoking their depressive symptoms go down and if they relapse, their mood goes back to where they were. An effective anti-depressant should look like that,' reports the Daily Mail.

The researchers studied a group of 236 men and women who were trying to quit the habit. They received nicotine patches and counselling and agreed to a quit date, according to a Brown statement.

Then were then tested for depressive symptoms a week before the quit date and then two, eight, 16 and 28 weeks after that date.

Nearly half of the subjects, who never managed to abstain from smoking, remained the unhappiest throughout the study.

A fifth only quit up to the two-week assessment while around one in six managed to stay off cigarettes until the eight-week assessment and the same proportion kicked the habit for the whole study.

The scientists found those who quit and stuck with abstinence were the happiest to begin with, and this elevated mood remained constant throughout.

Those who quit temporarily were happy while they were not smoking, but their mood darkened significantly when they gave into temptation.

Kahler said he was confident the results apply to most people, even though the smokers in this study were also heavy drinkers.

Eating at your desk 'could make you fat'

Eating at your desk makes you far more likely to snack later in the day, say scientists.

The researchers from the University of Bristol were studying the ways in which memory and attention influence our appetite.

They asked one group of participants to eat a lunch that comprised nine different foods while playing Solitaire - a computerised card-sorting game.

They gave a second group the same lunch but provided no distractions.

The researchers found that those who played Solitaire felt less full after lunch.

The effect was long-lasting as half an hour later the participants who played the computer game ate around twice as many chocolate biscuits as the non-distracted participants.

Also read: Sex begins in the kitchen

At the end of the test session, the distracted participants also found it more difficult to remember what order they had eaten the food items provided for lunch.

The scientists said their findings showed that distraction during one meal can lead to increased food intake later in the day, which could have a significant impact on obesity.

"When people think about memory, they think about remembering shopping lists and people's names and things like that," the Daily Mail quoted lead author Dr Jeff Brunstrom as saying.

But the reality is that memory helps us without even thinking about it. It helps us remember how to walk to work and we are trying to suggest it affects appetite,"

Best way to lose weight

The combination of dieting and exercise can make you shed 11 percent of your weight -- way more than what you would lose by following either of the strategy individually, says a new study.

'We were surprised at how successful the women were,' said Anne McTiernan, director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre (FHCRC), reports the journal Obesity.

This summer: How to stay healthy and happy

The year-long intervention involved 439 overweight-to-obese, sedentary, post-menopausal, aged 50-75, who were randomly assigned to one of four groups: exercise only, diet only, exercise and diet and no intervention.

Researchers found that the women in the exercise-only group lost, on average, 2.4 percent of their starting weight as compared to an average weight loss of 8.5 percent among women in the diet-only group.

DID YOU KNOW? There are some food that actually slow down ageing process? Find out what or what not to eat!

The greatest weight loss was achieved by women who both changed their diet and exercised regularly; these women shed an average of 10.8 percent of their starting weight (with a mean weight loss of 19.8 pounds).

Two-thirds of the women in this group achieved the study goal of losing at least 10 percent of their starting weight.

'Even though this degree of weight loss may not bring an obese individual to a normal weight, losing even this modest amount of weight can bring health benefits such as a reduced risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer,' added Mc Tiernan, who led the study, according to a FHCRC statement.