Your Health

Good News
CHEW ON THIS Your personal trainer may not approve, but a new study reveals what may be the easiest way to burn off calories: chewing gum. Chomping for an hour on a big wad (half a pack, sugarless) raises the metabolic rate 19% and burns 11 extra calories. That may not sound like much, but researchers calculate that chewing every waking hour can knock off 10 lbs. a year. The experiment illustrates that even the most trivial increase in activity can affect weight. Another example: strolling at a snail's pace (1 m.p.h.) doubles metabolic rate and burns 62 calories an hour. Better still, try walking and chewing gum at the same time.

LIFE AT THE PUMP There's new hope for patients whose colon cancer has spread to the liver. Survival rates improve dramatically when cancer-fighting drugs are delivered directly to the liver through a pump implanted in the belly after the malignancy is surgically removed. In a study, 85% of patients who received chemotherapy via the pump along with standard chemo were still alive after two years, compared with 72% on standard chemo alone.

Bad News
CANCER CONUNDRUM Nearly 65% of U.S. cancer patients are 65 or older, yet they make up only 25% of the patients enrolled in trials of new cancer treatments. There are reasons. Medicare doesn't reimburse the cost of experimental procedures, and older folks often have complications like heart disease and diabetes, making them too frail to tolerate aggressive new therapies. Don't despair. There are trials suitable for seniors; you need to shop around.

GONE TO POT Here's a downside to getting high. A new report suggests that smoking marijuana once a day for several years may more than double the risk of developing throat and neck cancers. Add cigarette smoking, and the odds shoot up 36-fold. Turns out the time between smoking dope and cancer is about 30 years. So if you're a baby boomer who inhaled in the '60s, start getting regular checkups now.

Sources: Good News--New England Journal of Medicine (12/30/99). Bad News--New England Journal of Medicine (12/30/99); Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (12/17/99)