Dear Healthy Friend,

I'm a comfort eater... When something upsets me, I reach for the most unhealthy snack I can get my grubby paws on! I know it's bad for me, I know I shouldn't do it, but I just can't help myself! After reading Christine's article below, linking junk food and depression, I've had to re-consider this awful habit! If you're anything like me, you might also need to....

In the name of good health,

Taryn Strugnell
Managing Editor of Nutrition & Healing

P.S. Keep reading to see what Dr Wright has to say about the health benefits of saunas...

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Junk food and depression linked...
Christine O'Brien
Contributor, Nutrition & Healing

People eat junk when they're unhappy... And then they're unhappy with what they ate. 

They're so unhappy, that they eat more junk - leading to still more unhappiness and still more junk.

It's a never-ending cycle that'll have you depressed and wearing pants with an elastic band in no time... And a new study links that cycle to one ingredient in particular: Trans fat, the not-so-secret ingredient that helps to make junk food so tasty... And so dangerous.

And now, Spanish researchers say people who eat the most of it are more likely to be depressed

The researchers examined data on 12,059 subjects collected over six years. No one was depressed at the start of the study, but by the six-year mark 657 of them had battled the blues.

After checking out their dietary habits, the researchers found that those who ate the most trans fats were 48% more likely to be among the ranks of the depressed.

It didn't take much, either - the researchers say trans fat accounted for an average of just 0.4% of the diet for the study volunteers.

You might even be among them and never realise it, thanks to one of the sneakiest tricks in the history of product labelling: Food makers are allowed to round trans fats down - so anything with less than half a gram of trans fat per serving can actually get a big fat "0" on the label.

Eat a few of these "TRANS FAT FREE!" products or a few servings of one, and you could get more trans fat in a single sitting than the Spanish volunteers ate all day.

But let's face it, anything that screams "TRANS FAT FREE!" on the label probably isn't something you should be eating anyway - because at the end of the day, where you get your trans fat from is far more important than how much of it you eat.

If you stick to natural trans fats from sources such as fresh meat, you'll be fine - and less likely to battle depression, since meat is rich in mood-boosting nutrients such as vitamin B12.

The trans fats in junk food, on the other hand, are made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils - and if you eat that stuff, you'll be fat and depressed in no time.

Remove trans fats from those junk foods, however, and... You'll still be fat and depressed in no time.

Stick to the steak instead.

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Getting steamy

Q: Like so many other people, I joined a gym last month. I've been eyeing out the sauna. Are saunas good for you? Do you recommend their use?

Dr. Wright: I wrote about this topic back in the September 2009 issue of Nutrition & Healing. In that article, I outlined the numerous health benefits associated with saunas. The most well-known benefits include relaxation and detoxification. But they also have positive effects on the heart, lowering blood pressure and reducing risk of atherosclerosis.

Research indicates that saunas' high temperatures increase the production of a substance called nitric oxide synthase in the arteries. Increased levels of nitric oxide synthase will produce more nitric oxide, which helps dilate coronary arties and, in turn, improves heart function.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that the specific type of sauna I wrote about in September 2009 is called a far infrared sauna. Far infrared waves warm things without actually heating up the air in between the heat source and the object. So in a far infrared sauna, the air is warm and dry, as opposed to the humid heat in traditional saunas.

I'm not sure which type they have at your gym, but it's likely the traditional steam version. As I mentioned above, those still offer the benefits of detoxification and relaxation, but the research I've found on the heart-health benefits has all been done using far infrared saunas.