Will you get a heart attack if you have high cholesterol or LDL cholesterol?
High cholesterol, according to new research, is not even a very predictive risk factor for heart attacks!

Why not?

• A new American study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had normal cholesterol levels that did not indicate that they were at high risk for a cardiovascular event.

Almost 75 percent of heart attack patients fell within recommended targets for “bad” LDL cholesterol, (more…)

As an artist I’m going to paint you a picture with three colours relating to aspects of my life.
Summarizing my life I’d say I’m a passionate person with a strong faith and have a desire to live life to the full. I have a real love of colour and my art slogan is ‘adding colour to your life.’ Someone once said “at every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.”
My first brushstroke is GREEN. It represents my sprouting, or growing years. I had loving parents and an older brother Wayne (who is also a professional artist). We had the same interests in sport and art. (more…)

“It is the still small voice that the soul heeds; not the deafening blasts of doom.”
- William Dean Howell
Often, it seems, we come upon a problem that takes all our strength to even begin to figure how to solve it.
As time goes on, it appears that every problem we encounter becomes more difficult than the previous one. How can we proceed when it appears that the world is crashing all around?
What choices do we make? Where do we go for help? How do we cope? What road do we choose? Obviously, Yogi Berra’s statement, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it” does not bring us great comfort (more…)

Research shows the refined sugar helps cancer cells proliferate
By Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON — Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have (more…)

1:42 PM Tuesday Jul 20, 2010
Air fresheners and some cleaning products increase the risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.

Women who regularly used a combination of cleaning products were twice as likely to have breast cancer as other healthy women, US scientists found. The strongest link was between cancer and air fresheners and mould and mildew removers.

Increased incidence of cancer was also linked to insect repellents. (more…)

4:00 AM Tuesday Jul 20, 2010

New Zealand researchers have established that vitamin C can help to block the growth of cancer cells – an important experimental finding they expect could be quickly adopted into cancer treatment.

The role of vitamin C in cancer treatment has been controversial for decades, with contradictory findings from various studies. In an international review of 20 human trials of vitamin C and other “anti-oxidant” supplements, the influential Cochrane Collaboration found no convincing evidence that they could prevent (more…)

One prevailing counterfeit of humility is self-deprecation, or thinking you have little or no value. But as Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale wrote:
“People with humility don’t think less of themselves; they just think of themselves less.”
Pride leads you to compare yourself to others and to derive your self-worth from things outside of yourself.
When you’re humble, you’re only concerned with your own progress relative to yourself–not to other people.
True humility flows from having the proper allegiance to a Higher Power; no (more…)

New Zealand beaches are so awesome. Hard to beat. My husband and I have just returned from about 3 weeks from holidaying at various beaches – Raglan, Orewa, and Cook’s. As much as I love holidays and the beach the highlights of holiday times are often the people you meet and spend time with.

Alan, my husband, loves cycling, kayaking, running..I love a good book and meeting people. Met up with fiends we hadn’t seen for about a decade at a market day and spend quality time with lots of special friends – memorable times.

Now it’s time to make my goals happen (more…)

I’m believing for my best year yet for myself and my family. I know it won’t just happen that way unless I have the right mind set, love others and put them first, have a servant attitude, have a vision and a purpose. How can I bring positive change to my world? It is important to ask questions and give ourselves time to think and and then the answers will come our way.
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

“T’is the season to be jolly, tra la la la la la la la la”.

It’s the wonderful Christmas season. A time for looking back on the year and although hard for many it’s important for us to be thankful for the many blessings of God. Often those blessings have gone unnoticed because of our busyness of life but in the midst of our daily lives God blesses us every day. Each day of the year is a ‘season to be jolly’ as we can find joy in every situation as God promises “in His presence is FULLNESS of joy.” (more…)