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How not to say the wrong thing. (Illustration by Wes Bausmith…) When Susan had breast cancer, we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan's colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn't feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague's response? "This isn't just about you. " "It's not? " The same theme came up again when our friend Katie had a brain aneurysm. YEAR IN REVIEW: 10 tips for a better life from The Times' Op-Ed pages in 2013 This woman loves Katie, and she said what she did because the sight of Katie in this condition moved her so deeply.

Susan has since developed a simple technique to help people avoid this mistake. Draw a circle. Here are the rules. Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings. When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Comfort IN, dump OUT. Most of us know this. And don't worry. What Happens to Your Brain on Sugar, Explained by Science. On the left is an image of your brain. In the center is your brain on drugs. Then, on the right, is your brain on sugar. Notice the similarities between the middle and right images?

The normal brain has a lot more red stuff highlighted in it — called Dopamine. This chemical is produced in the part of the brain that is associated with reward. When someone experiences a reward — say while eating a really good meal — their Dopamine (red stuff) level spikes. Let's take another look: Image: Wikimedia Commons This PET brain scans show chemical differences in the brain between addicts and non-addicts. This is what sugar does to your brain — the exact same thing smoking, alcohol and cocaine do. Just how bad is America's addiction to sugar? The Centers for Disease Control project a double- or triple-fold increase in the proportions of Americans with diabetes by 2050. So basically, Oreos are legal crack. And just like illegal drugs, large amounts of sugar can be very bad for you. Tom McKay. The Ways Food Tricks Our Brains - Derek Thompson.

How restaurants, low-cal labels, candles, music, and even salads fool us into unhealthy eating. Freshly-baked Oreos (Aly Song/Reuters) In 1998, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania published a study that might strike you as kind of mean. They took two people with severe amnesia, who couldn’t remember events occurring more than a minute earlier, and fed them lunch. Then a few minutes later, they offered a second lunch. The amnesic patients eagerly ate it. This might seem like a somewhat trivial discovery, but it unveils a simple truth about why we eat. While our stomachs know exactly what food we’re eating (since they’re the organ responsible for processing it) our brains are a bit more easily tricked. How Menus Trick Us Calorie counts can be good things.

How Food Tricks Us Simply labeling a food as “healthy” makes it taste worse. In a series of studies written up in the latest JCR, researchers asked participants to eat bite-sized brownies while watching TV (fun!). Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share. Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share. Mental Health: It's Time To Talk.