After you've been through something traumatizing, naturally, you're physically and emotionally exhausted and you just want to lie down. But according to a new study, that's when your brain sears those negative memories into your brain. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst conducted a study on 100 adults. They showed them several photos, including some disturbing ones, and had them rate their reactions to them. Then they showed the group the same images again 12 hours later—the only difference was that half of them had slept while the other half stayed awake. They found that those who had stayed awake weren't as effected by the images and had a harder time remembering which ones they had already seen. "It's true that 'sleeping on it' is usually a good thing to do," Rebecca Spencer, a neuroscientist at UMass and co-author of the study, told ABC. "It's just when something truly traumatic or out of the ordinary happens that you might want to stay awake." "This study suggests the biological response we have after trauma might actually be healthy," she continued. Read More

There are two certainties in life—death and taxes. Although nowadays, everyone and their best friend's grandmother's former roommate having a Facebook account is quickly becoming a universal truth as well. So, in the event of your untimely demise, there's no better way to get any last words, or last potshots, out to all your loved (and hated) ones than via your Facebook account. Now you can! A new app, appropriately named "If I Die," allows you to record messages that will go out to your buddies in case you buy the farm before you're ready. It's simple. You record a final message and write as many personal messages to friends (and arch nemeses) as you want. Then, once you kick the bucket, your video will get posted on your wall and your messages will get sent out. You even have the option of writing several messages and scheduling them to get sent in intervals. But how will it know that you've started pushing up daisies? That's where you need to choose three of your closest and most trusted friends/family members to be your "trustees." They'll be faced with the grim task of verifying that you have indeed bitten the big one, and then your zombie messages will begin. Read More

The next time someone says they're "heartbroken," they might not be acting melodramatic. A new study has found that losing someone close to you can literally break your heart... and the group that was the most significantly effected was young men. The study, published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, assessed the heart health of people who had lost loved ones. Elizabeth Mostofsky, the lead author of the study, interviewed close to 2,000 people who had suffered heart attacks. She then took their heart attack information and compared it with any bereavement they suffered around that time. Her findings were pretty significant. She discovered that one day after the death of a loved one, the chances of suffering a heart attack were 21 times higher than normal. The week after, the heart attack risk was still six times higher, and they finally started to go down after about a month. "We compared these patients’ losses in the recent past of the last day or week before their heart attack to the loss we would have expected to see based on their loss [pattern] over the past six months," says Mostofsky. Read More

The top winter fashion must-haves that can go effortlessly from the snow trails to the bar. Read More