Cholesterol

Gary Stevens became the oldest jockey to win the Preakness on Saturday, and the 50-year-old Hall of Famer has Clark Masterson to thank. Masterson, a personal trainer based in Bellevue, Wash., helped the 50-year-old jockey lose 25 pounds and nearly 8 percent body fat during two months of workouts last year. It allowed Stevens to come out of retirement after seven years and resume a riding career that produced eight Triple Crown victories and nearly 5,000 other victories.Running in his 17th Preakness, Stevens rode Oxbow to his third win. Stevens also won the race in 1997 (aboard Silver Charm)

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, but many don't recognize the warning signs. They may ignore the symptoms or mistake them for more benign ailments. Dr. Shannon J. Winakur, medical director of the Women's Heart Center at Saint Agnes Hospital, said women should be more aware of heart disease and how to prevent it. How are the warning signs of heart disease different in women? Warning signs of heart disease typically occur with exertion and go away with rest. The classic symptom of heart disease is a dull tightness in the center of the chest, which may or may not radiate to the neck, jaw, left shoulder or left arm. Women can certainly have these symptoms, but they also often describe sharp or burning chest pain.

Adults who eat a large bowl of oat bran cereal every day can reduce their blood cholesterol levels by a moderate amount, an analysis of 10 studies has found.Cholesterol levels fell an average of 2 percent to 3 percent in the 1,278 adults studied. There were larger drops in people with higher blood cholesterol levels.The study, being published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was conducted by Cynthia M. Ripson and Dr. Joseph M. Keenan of the department of family practice at the University ofMinnesota.

At the request of her husband, Bill, Judy Heinekamp of Baltimore wrote in requesting the recipe for the classic Baltimore coddie, or codfish cake. Barbra Rosenberg, also of Baltimore, sent in her "tried and true" recipe. She says that it brings back childhood memories of trips to the neighborhood drugstore for "coddies and a chocolate Coke." Her recipe calls for salt cod, but she says that if that is not readily available, fresh or frozen (and defrosted) cod may be substituted. I tested the recipe as written, using the salt cod. It's a bit time-consuming, but I decided it was probably the best way to get an authentic coddie.

A year or so ago, you had a letter from a reader who said a pill she was taking turned her gray hair dark again. I know it's not guaranteed to work, but I'd like to try it. Do you know what she was taking? She was taking two cholesterol-lowering drugs, Zocor and Zetia. Her report was strange because her original hair color was blond, but her gray hair started growing in black while on these drugs. We invited other readers to tell us if they had similar hair-color changes, and many did. Most were on Zocor or Zetia or the combination (Vytorin)

My face looked like a dry, glazed doughnut for eight years, until I read your column about using milk of magnesia on the face and scalp. My dermatologist had been treating my scalp, but I got nowhere. Both problems disappeared after one application of MoM. Milk of magnesia (magnesium hydroxide aka MoM) has been used for more than a century as an oral laxative. More recently, we have heard from readers that if this chalky liquid is applied to underarms, it acts as a deodorant. Someone else told us that topical applications of milk of magnesia on the face while showering could be effective for flakes.

I've recently been diagnosed with genital herpes and treated it with the prescription drug Zovirax.I would rather use something more natural.Have any of your readers found alternative treatments that cure it? I read in an herbal book that olive leaf extract works. Is this true?Herpes infections are caused by a virus that resists cure even by the prescription drugs that control it effectively (Famvir, Valtrex, Zovirax).These antiviral medications speed healing and, if taken preventively, dramatically reduce the number of outbreaks.

It was a few days after Christmas when 16-year-old Amanda Custer and her mom made a rare stop for a takeout burger. The indulgence ended badly for Amanda. Soon after, she said, "I felt real nauseous. Food was, like, gross. I got really bad cramps, a whole bunch of heartburn and an upset stomach. " And it didn't go away. "I would feel OK and try to eat something, and then I'd regret it," she recalled. "The pain afterwards was horrible. A couple of hours after I ate, I'd be going to the bathroom, feeling nauseous.

There are more olive trees in Puglia than anywhere else in Italy. In fact, with an estimated 50 million trees growing in the Italian boot's "heel," there's nearly one for every man, woman and child living in the entire nation. Driving south along the Adriatic Sea, as I did late last fall, I saw acre after glorious acre of Pugliese olive trees, which have gnarled and windblown trunks, making sculptural shapes that are both colossal and somehow ethereal.

Eleven-year-old Tyler Parker-Rollins says being vegan isn't always easy. But he says it's also "fun" and that he plans to be one "forever. " His 9-year-old brother, Will, loved it when his friends tried vegan pizza at his birthday party and "they actually really liked it. " Their little sister, Maya, who's 5, says she's vegan "because I love animals, and I don't want pigs to be killed. " She then runs off to find her copy of "Charlotte's Web," which, she says, "is where I got that from.