I’ve used Smart Balance Regular for years, thinkin’ I was doing a good thing.  But the Nutrition Action Healthletter, www.cspi.org, pointed out that there’s still a bit too much saturated fat in the regular, better go with the light.  They liked the Promise spreads, Olivio, and Country Crock Omega Plus to balance our fat intake of cheese, chicken, and even low fat dairy foods.

If you have 10 or more pounds to lose, you’ll burn the MOST  FAT if you walk 3.1 miles per hour!  There – I’ve said it!  That’s a brisk stroll — you can catch up with a friend via cell, listen to a book on your ipod, and you won’t even sweat so you can walk on your lunch hour.  Bring your sneakers to work! The study was in The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. 

Men and women aged 55 to 59 were most likely to have a sexually transmitted infection in a recent study of the over-45 crowd.  Increasingly likely to be single, mature adults are unfortunately less likely to use condoms.  Just because you can’t get pregnant doesn’t mean you can’t get genital warts or herpes, people – use condoms!  C31G and Buffergel (www.reprotect.com) are two vaginal gels under investigation right now that women will be able to use to block STD’s (and possibly pregnancy as well) starting in 2011. 

Injectable Dysport (www.dysport.co.nz) takes effect faster and lasts 4 months instead of 3.  My local cutting-edge guy is already using it and says “Hey, this way a woman can look good for the bridal shower AND the wedding!”  Good point, and you could save $400/year if you use a filler regularly.

The good thing about the new “CT scan-aided” virtual colonoscopy is that they can check your bone density at the same time.  Pain-free with no anesthesia, the 15-minute CT scan of the abdomen creates cross-sectional images of the colon, spine and hip, detecting precancerous polyps and bone-mineral loss.  The bad thing is, you still have to do that nasty “prep!”  Expect to see this scan locally this year.