Blog Posts by YouBeauty.com

A few simple movements can greatly improve your mood.

Do you ever find yourself slouching in your chair or walking with hunched shoulders and a droopy neck? We're all guilty of these posture no-nos from time to time, but new research reveals that poise is not the only thing lost when we give in to the temptation to slump. Such postures can send "sad" signals to our brain, darkening our mood. On the other hand, acting out certain "happy" movements has the opposite effect, brightening our outlook and lifting our spirits.

QUIZ: Measure Your Mood

"When we make a gesture and the movements are related to a specific emotion, it can elicit or create that emotion in us," says Tal Shafir, Ph.D., a specialist in dance movement therapy and neuroscience at the University of Haifa in Israel and lead author of the 2013 paper in the journal Brain and Cognition.

What's more, Shafir and her colleagues found that we don't even have to enact these so-called happy and sad movements in order to experience the corresponding emotions. Simply observing someone

Does this mean we have to give up our pretty pouts?

Building on the lead-in-lipstick scares of recent years, a May 2013 study released today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives reveals how much lead, cadmium, aluminum and other metals you ingest every time you swipe a bold shade across your lips. The results aren't too pretty, but don't toss the gloss just yet.

Researchers from the School of Public Health at U.C. Berkeley tested 32 drugstore and designer lipsticks and glosses for nine metals, including lead, aluminum, cadmium, chromium and manganese, exposure to all of which may have cancer-causing or neurotoxic effects. They found manganese, titanium, chromium, nickel and aluminum in practically every product, lead in 75 percent of them and cadmium in nearly half.

MORE: The Truth About Lead and Lipstick

That sounds bad, but it's not necessarily surprising-or worrisome. Metals are used to make the pigments that make your favorite lipsticks that perfect shade of whatever. They are then washed out before

Baker Hyde's book, which documents her journey.

We've all been there. That bold lip or sexy smoky eye we planned with the best of intentions doesn't quite turn out the way we would have liked, and the only saving grace comes via the swipe of a saturated cotton ball.

Some of us will give it another go (and pull it off), while others may throw their hands up at the idea of ever attempting the trend again. But 38-year-old Phoebe Baker Hyde had a far more radical reaction of her own.

When a red party dress failed to live up to expectations, the cultural anthropology Ivy Leaguer decided she had enough of trying to meet an impossible standard she had self-admittedly set for herself. She swore off all beauty enhancements for a year, including makeup, hair products, jewelry and new clothes. The extreme beauty cleanse serves as the basis for her recently launched book, "The Beauty Experiment: How I Skipped Lipstick, Ditched Fashion, Faced the World Without Concealer, and Learned to Love the Real Me."

Now as someone who would

A negative outlook really can rub off on others.Imagine the following scene. An 18-year-old college freshman, Rose, calls her parents at the end of her first semester away at school:

Mom: "Honey, how are you? How are classes going?"

Rose: "Ahh... Well, I caught something from Jen, my roommate."

Dad: "Like a cold, honey? What did you catch?"

Rose: "Not a cold, dad, something worse."

Mom: "Something worse?! What, honey, what happened to you?"

Rose: "I caught a cognitive vulnerability to depression."

Dad and Mom in unison: "A what?!"

Dad: "Depression isn't something you catch, honey. I'm so glad you don't have the flu."

Rose: "No dad, it's for real. I can tell. I caught her cognitive vulnerability. I know it, and now I'll never finish the semester…"

Sounds wild, right? Well, new research from the University of Notre Dame found that a so-called cognitive vulnerability to depression is, indeed, contagious among college roommates. Rose's roommate's vulnerability to depression has "rubbed off" on

Resting isn't as helpful as you might think.

Ever survive a particularly grueling workout and then had trouble getting out of bed, let alone walking, the next morning? Then you've experienced DOMS-delayed onset muscle soreness-a phenomenon that usually hits within 12 to 24 hours after exercising and peaks around 48 hours post-workout.

MORE: Is Muscle Soreness Good or Bad?

Massage has long been recommended as a remedy for muscle pain, but a March 2013 study shows that dragging yourself back to the gym for more exercise can actually relieve the soreness just as effectively as booking a masseuse at your favorite spa. (Granted, it's a lot less fun.)

The study, published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, involved 20 women who did shoulder exercises to the point of soreness, and then returned to the lab two days later. Each woman received a 10-minute massage on one shoulder, and did 10 minutes of exercise on the other shoulder. Both activities helped diminish muscle soreness.

"There's no miraculous

Burning belly fat isn't as easy as doing a couple hundred crunches.

We Asked: James Graves, Ph.D., professor of exercise and sport science and dean of the College of Health at the University of Utah.

The Answer: Sadly, there's no such thing as spot reducing fat (short of, say, liposuction). You could do crunches until the cows come home, but if you've got too much belly fat overtop, no one's going to see your six pack.

MORE: Crunch-Free Toning Exercises

Fat loss is systemic, meaning it happens throughout your whole body, not one trouble spot at a time. To reduce fat in any one place, you really need an old-fashioned more-calories-out-than-in approach that addresses body fat as a whole. That means a well-rounded exercise program, with a combination of aerobic endurance activities and strengthening exercises all over your body, plus a healthy diet.

MORE: Why Sit-ups Are Better Than Crunches

Physiologically, the goal is to simultaneously shrink your fat cells and increase the size of your muscle cells. Crunches won't burn calories

Newer generations are aging faster than ever before.

Have you ever worried that you're going to turn into your parents? Well, if you're not careful it's going to happen sooner than you think-and in ways you might not have expected.

An April 2013 paper in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that when it comes to metabolic health (basically, how well your body uses insulin to process the sugar in your blood), today's 45 year olds are on par with 60 year olds of the generations before them. What does that mean for 20- and 30-somethings? Well, you do the math: Just add 15.

QUIZ: Find Out How Long Your Youthful Looks Will Last

The study measured various aspects of metabolic health, including the prevalence of being overweight or obese and body mass index (BMI). All three are notably higher in young people today than they had been in the past, with obesity among women in their 20s up twofold from a generation earlier. That means that a 20-something is two times more likely to be obese by her 30s than a woman 10

Taking care of yourself now will really pay off later.

Getting old is getting expensive. Really expensive. Think billions-hundreds of billions, even. And according to an April 2013 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, it's just going to get more so in the coming decades. Why? The incidence of dementia is on the rise in our country and it is a pricey disease. There are so many costs associated with dementia-medication, health care, home care, etc. It's not just as simple as taking a pill and calling your doc in the morning.

QUIZ: How Fast Are You Aging?

Fortunately, dementia is a chronic disease. "Fortunate?!" you say. Yup, fortunate, because like many chronic diseases, dementia is in part lifestyle-driven, which means that you can help control it. There is an abundance of research, and more emerging everyday, that what you eat, how active you are and how you manage your stress today all contribute to your risk of dementia later in life.

Let's break down what you can do.

Watch What You Eat
Brain food is