Yes, I have heard this one quite often! Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with “feeling healthy!” However, feeling healthy and actually being healthy may be two very, very different things.

Have you ever heard about some of the basketball players and marathon runners who looked to be in the peak of health and dropped down dead? Do you remember Michael Landon? He played the part of ‘Little Joe’ in Little House on the Prairie.

When he was diagnosed with cancer, he said in a television interview “I have never felt better in my life”. Six months later he died.

Have you ever thought about the fact that people degenerate over time and may not be aware of severe health issues?

That they just seem to accept that illness is a consequence of getting old?

The reality is that our bodies are very forgiving and adapt to so many stresses. Yet, sometimes, there’s no warning before sudden death or critical illness.

Let’s just take a hard look at the facts and what you are facing in today’s world:

· A man’s chances of getting cancer during his lifetime are now 48% (almost half) and a woman’s chances are now

. 38%. The Canadian Cancer Society is now saying 50% of the Canadian population will have been diagnosed with some from of cancer by the year 2010.

· In 1900, 5% of the US population died of heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. Today, 95% of us will (more…)

We know smoking is dangerous, but for women, there are also other health risks due to physiological and lifestyle differences, which puts women in a more dangerous position.

A CAR pulled up next to me as I was waiting at the traffic light last week. A slim hand reached out from the car window, a cigarette dangling from the fingers. When I looked over, I saw that the driver was a young woman, maybe in her early 20s.

More and more women, especially teenage girls, are picking up the filthy habit of smoking. This is despite decades of medical and public health campaigns about the dangers of cigarettes.

Unfortunately, the voices of scientists and health authorities are often drowned out by powerful advertising and marketing by tobacco manufacturers.

The dangers of smoking are well-known. It not only causes various types of cancer, but it also increases the risk of respiratory disease and heart disease, such as heart attacks.

It is widely rumoured that the iconic Marlboro Man, whose image sold the world on the idea of smoking as a rugged, masculine lifestyle, died of lung cancer (or rather, the actor who portrayed Marlboro Man in the advertisements).

But the idea that only cowboys die of smoking-related cancer is a myth. It is ordinary people who are suffering the consequences of smoking – fathers, mothers, young men and women.

In the United States, 140,000 women die each year from smoking-related causes. In Peninsular Malaysia, lung cancer is the most common cancer among men, and the eighth most common cancer among women.

Because of the glamour associated with smoking, many women are (more…)