Cholesterol

The participants then switched diets and continued eating only food provided by the researchers for another five weeks.

The Healthy Heart diet with macadamia nuts did reduce total "We observed a reduction in LDL similar to that seen with other tree nuts like walnuts and almonds," says Griel.

Individual calorie levels were used for each participant so that they did not gain or lose weight during the study.

Both diets were matched for total fat, containing 33 percent calories from total fat.

The Heart Healthy diet with macadamia nuts had 7 percent saturated fat, 18 percent monounsaturated fat and 5 percent polyunsaturated fat.

The standard American diet had 13 percent saturated fat, 11 percent monounsaturated fat and 5 percent polyunsaturated fat.

The macadamia nut diet included macadamia nuts as a snack, mixed into meals, as a salad topping and in cookies and muffins.

"The total fat was the same in both diets," says Griel.

"We substituted the macadamia nuts for other sources of fat and protein in the diet.

For example, we could switch skim milk for 2 percent milk and add some macadamia nuts." Macadamia nuts are nativ...

''It's tough living in America,'' says Maribeth Rouseff, the wellness guru at Baptist Health South Florida.Overall, 50 percent of a person's health is caused by his or her own behavior, according to Mercer, a benefits consultant.

Twenty percent is from genetics and another 20 percent is related to environmental issues.

The final 10 percent concerns access to care - an issue affecting the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance.Other studies show ''you can virtually cut healthcare costs in half if the employee is a nonsmoker, nonobese and engages in physical activity three times a week,'' says Bruce Shanefield, who's in the Miami office of the Aon consulting firm.With numbers like that, employers are jumping on the wellness bandwagon.

''National statistics show 85 percent of companies now have wellness programs,'' says Kay Gulick of FlashPoint52, a wellness consulting and health ...

In my own defense, the car battery is driving me nuts because the junk that holds it in place is rusted and crusted to the point where no tool on earth seems able to loosen it.

I know you mean well but don't tell me about squirting everything with Liquid Wrench.

I've gone through half a can of the stuff without budging anything.

I'm still lucid enough to know that a hacksaw could solve the whole mess but then I would have to jury rig some Rube Goldberg apparatus to fasten the new battery in place.

I keep hoping that a few more sleepless nights will bring inspiration and I won't have to invent a new way to keep a battery from bouncing onto the road.

And don't ask me to explain once more who Rube Goldberg was.

You're too young to understand.

The fact that I can't arrange problems in order of importance has always baffled my wife, notably during the years I was allegedly running the Tehachapi News.

As just one case in point, when I should have been wracking my brain to come up with a scheme for meeting the next payroll she would find me agonizing over a crack in the cover of the toilet tank.

This peculiarity of mine (I don't think it rises to the level of madness yet) has forced me into a great deal of introspection.

Why do I sit up wide-eyed until after midnight, terrified that I'm coming down with leprosy when it's only a case of dry skin?

Then wh...