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@BI Label yourlife:HEALTH

Things to know

The Mississippi State Department of Health reports these studies:

FROM CORNELL UNIVERSITY The pancreas, bottom right, is six inches long.

n Pregnant women who eat plenty of red and orange fruits and vegetables may be 30 to 50 percent less likely to give birth prematurely, according to a study of 5,000 mothers-to-be reported in “Epidemiology.”

n People who continue to work after retirement have fewer diseases and fewer functional limitations than people who quit completely, according to a study of 12,000 adults from 51 to 61 years old and reported in “Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.”

n According to a new European study, teenagers who had more than 1,000 lifetime hours of swimming in chlorinated pools, either indoors or outdoors, were more than eight times as likely to have asthma compared to swimmers in non-chlorinated pools, as reported in “Pediatrics.”

@BI Label yourlife:CANCER

Be aware of your pancreas

This is Pancreatic Awareness Month, a point driven home with the recent deaths of actor Patrick Swayze and journalist Jack Nelson, who first worked on this newspaper and became known for his coverage of civil rights and political corruption.

The pancreas is a 6-inch organ located behind the stomach in the back of the abdomen. It contains glands that create pancreatic juices, hormones, and insulin.

Because symptoms of this cancer often surface late or mimic other diseases, pancreatic cancer is often detected late and once diagnosed, the five-year survival rate is only 5 percent. Between 30,000 to 40,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S.

TRIVIA

Why do we say it?

Have you ever been caught red-handed? Today, it means guilty of major and minor offenses, but there was a time it meant certain death.

Webb Garrison in “Why You Say It,” explains it this way:

“A common felony of the past involved the butchering of another person’s pig, sheep or cow. Under legal codes that prevailed for generations, possession of freshly killed meat did not constitute proof of guilt.

“Only a man caught with the blood of an animal on his hands was sure to be convicted. It was a waste of breath to plead for mercy after having been caught red-handed.”

— Sun Herald