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Are you Heart Smart?| Test Your Cancer Knowledge| Ask Your Doctor About Something  |Community Calendar

Follow these 12 tips to get back on the path to a healthy heart:

-You can reduce your risk for heart disease and a heart attack by having regular medical checkups, taking prescribed medications and adopting healthy habits.
-Smokers are almost three times as likely to have heart attacks as nonsmokers.
-If your total cholesterol level is 240 mg/dl or higher, you have twice the risk of having a heart attack as someone with a total cholesterol level of 200 mg/dl.
-Just 30 minutes of daily exercise, such as walking, cycling or swimming, can help you reduce your risk of heart disease.
-A drink or two of alcohol daily may decrease your risk for heart disease, but the risk grows if you have more than two drinks daily.
-High blood pressure causes the heart to enlarge and arteries can become scarred and hardened.
-One-third of women and 20 percent of men who survive a first heart attack will have another within six months.
-Your risk of developing heart disease increases if you're more than 30 percent overweight.
- Young women do not have the same risk for heart disease as young men because Estrogen provides younger women some protection. However, that protection is lost after menopause.
- Research shows a link between heart disease and high levels of stress and hostility.
- Eat healthy. Your diet greatly impacts your chances of developing heart disease.
- If you have heart disease, you should continue to exercise with a program approved by your doctor.

Reprinted with permission from Health Ink Communications.

Thousands of Americans die every year of heart attacks, and millions of others suffer from related diseases. Knowing the causes of heart disease and how you can prevent it can help you live a longer, healthier life.

"The most important thing you can do is get regular checkups to monitor your weight, blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels," says Alejandro J. Sequeira, M.D., division head of Cardiovascular Surgery at Sinai Hospital.

Test Your Cancer Knowledge

True or false: regularly eating meat cooked on a charcoal grill won't increase your risk for developing cancer?
Do you think the risk of dying from cancer in the US is increasing or decreasing?
Do you worry about developing brain tumors because you use a cell phone?

When talking about cancer, the imaginary line separating truth and myth has never been so blurry. With all the information floating around on the Internet, many people have a hard time sorting out the facts from the fiction. Luckily, the American Cancer Society recently published a list of the Top 10 Cancer Myths.

As it turns out, you can increase your cancer risk if you overuse your barbecue. Research shows grilling and broiling meat creates cancer-causing substances, but the idea is still a theory. The best advice is to choose a diet full of vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Even if you eat charbroiled burgers and hotdogs all summer long, the risk of a typical person dying of cancer has declined steadily since the early 1990s. More than half of the people diagnosed with cancer today will be cured.

And despite what you may have seen or read in the news, available evidence does not show cell phones to be a cause of cancer.

"People do come in with predispositions, but you have to explain to them that most cancers are some combination of a genetic predisposition with environmental factors," says Alan Levine, M.D., director of the Alvin & Lois Lapidus Cancer Institute at LifeBridge Health. "It may be that women who never breastfed have a higher instance rate than those who did, but genetic disposition far outweighs such factors." The only fact that seems certain is our understanding of cancer is still evolving.

"You can't be paranoid about everything in the world. But I tell my son not to use his cell phone so much," Dr. Levine says.

For more information, visit the American Cancer Society's Web page at www.cancer.org.

Myth: Living in a polluted city is a greater risk for lung cancer than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
Reality: The truth is just the opposite. Air pollution is far less likely to cause lung cancer than smoking cigarettes.

Myth: Some injuries can cause cancer later in life.
Reality: The fact is that a fall, a bruise, or any other injury is almost never the cause of a cancer.

Myth: You can prevent skin cancer by putting on one application of sunscreen at the start of each day.
Reality: The daily use of sunscreen can reduce skin cancer risk. But sunscreen needs to be reapplied, and even then it still only confers a certain amount of protection.

Ask your Doctor About Something - No Appointment Neccessary?

"Ask the Expert," the LifeBridge Health call-in television event, can be seen on WJZ-TV. Viewers like you will have the chance to call in and have your medical questions answered for free by experienced and knowledgeable health care experts.

Would you like to order a commemorative card or make a contribution to support our health care mission? LifeBridge Health Department of Development is online. Visit us at www.lifebridgehealth.org/giving.

Topic: Back and Neck Pain. Four out of five adults experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. LifeBridge Health physicians and experts from the Spine Centers at Sinai Hospital and Northwest Hospital Center will address your concerns about back and neck health, injuries and treatment options.

Watch for the next "Ask the Expert"
on January 27, 2006.