Way back when, the Beatles sang what most still believe: “Money can’t buy me love.” Recent research performed at the University of British Columbia in Canada, however, could alter that tune — at least in one UBC laboratory.

There, you could very well hear psychology professor Dr. Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues change the tune to “Money can buy me time.” And that purchased time according to their research procures something possibly even more important than love.

Happiness.

In the Medical News Today report of the UBC study, 60 working adults were told to spend $40 one weekend on material things designed to make them happy. Buying wine, clothing, and books were some typical purchases.

On another weekend, the same 60 were told to use $40 to purchase a service or services that would save them time. Ordering out for lunch at work, paying the boy next door to rake the leaves, and hiring a housecleaner were a few of the choices.

Which shopping splurge made the 60 happier? The second. And it did so, the researchers determined, by primarily reducing stress — the type that comes from feeling time-crunched.

So if you end too many of your days on edge, anxious from that unsettling sense of having left too much undone, you may want to reassess your discretionary spending. You may want to use what many call their “mad money” to keep from “going mad.”

You may want to buy less stuff and more time.

This change in spending is not the only way to positively affect your mental state, though. A number of recent studies have linked a poor diet with an increased risk of depression, but that shouldn’t make you blue because the converse is also true.

Eating well creates a sense of wellness.

For instance, tryptophan is an amino acid found in many foods from which your body can produce serotonin. The substance is also called “the happiness hormone,” for when you produce it, your mood improves.

So if you want to feel good, eat more of the many good-for-you foods that happen to be high in tryptophan. Turkey, chicken, most types of fish, soy beans, defatted soy bean products, fat-free cottage cheese, skim milk, chick peas, kidney beans, lima beans, navy beans, and many lesser known types of beans are some of your best choices.

Conversely, the consumption of alcoholic and caffeinated beverages reduce your natural production of serotonin — a reduction that, in a manner of speaking, doubles your chance of becoming downhearted.

That’s because the processed sugar that abounds in so many of alcoholic and caffeinated beverages creates a quick energy surge followed by a feeling of having very little or absolutely none. By itself, that void of energy can generate gloom.

Now combine that with the serotonin-sapping quality of the alcohol and/or caffeine in the drink, and the beverage that makes you feel pretty good as it goes down can make you feel quite the opposite once it gets there.

While it’s comforting to know that eating the right foods can keep you from becoming depressed, it’s absolutely crucial to know that the proper diet can even help after you’ve been diagnosed as having moderate — or even severe! — depression.

In a study primarily performed at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, researchers gave 67 patients diagnosed with moderate-to-severe depression seven one-hour dietary counseling sessions where they were advised to eat a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and lean meats, what amounted to a modified version of the Mediterranean diet. A control group was simply given what an article at the Fox News website referred to as “social support.”

By the end of the study, those patients who received dietary advice instead of social support were 375 percent more likely to be in remission.

Furthermore, the researchers found a correlation between the degree to which the subjects altered their eating habits and the likelihood of remission. In other words, the cleaner you ate, the more likely it became that you’d shed that sense of depression.

The Fox News article stated that this link between diet and depression made sense because food has already been shown to influence energy levels and mood. It also reinforced how poorly the typical American eats by referencing the study that determined 90 percent of added sugars come from processed foods and that nearly 60 percent of Americans consume too much of a type deemed even worse, “ultra-processed” foods.

And before you quickly dismiss this article as just a bunch of interesting facts culled together to keep the column going, consider that suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., taking about 40,000 lives each year. The risk of suicide has been clearly linked to the feeling of hopelessness, which is a common feeling in those depressed.

Furthermore, the World Health Organization has recently called mental illness a “worldwide epidemic” and estimates that by 2020 depression will be the most prevalent form of mental illness will be depression.