Fitness PR Division

Eating red meat may raise a woman's risk of a common type of breast cancer, and vitamin supplements will do little if anything to protect her heart, two new studies suggest.

Women who ate more than 1 1/2 servings of red meat per day were almost twice as likely to develop hormone-related breast cancer as those who ate fewer than three portions per week, one study found.

The other - one of the longest and largest tests of whether supplements of various vitamins can prevent heart problems and strokes in high-risk women - found that the popular pills do no good, although there were hints that women with the highest risk might get some benefit from vitamin C.

Italian researchers have come up with a novel way for cardiac rehabilitation patients to exercise their damaged hearts without having to squeeze into spandex or gyrate in a gym: waltzing. The dance proved to be just as effective as bicycle and treadmill training for improving exercise capacity in a study of 110 heart failure patients. Dancers also reported slightly more improvement in sleep, mood, and the ability to do hobbies, do housework and have sex than the others.

"This may be a more effective way of getting people to exercise, and may be more fun than running on a treadmill," said Dr. Robert Bonow, cardiology chief at Northwestern University School of Medicine. "Maybe we should try that here. I'm not sure we can get Americans to waltz, but they can certainly dance." Exercise is crucial after people suffer heart problems, but getting people to stick with it is tough. As many as 70 percent drop out of traditional programs, said Dr. Romualdo Belardinelli, director of cardiac rehabilitation at Lancisi Heart Institute in Ancona, Italy.