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FITNESS TIPS : All About YOU: Is That a Crystal Ball on Your Ear?
To predict your future, you're better off checking your earlobes for creases than your palms for life lines.

Topic: Remedies
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Look at your lobes. If you see a diagonal crease, it's one of the first signs of arterial aging. What makes arteries old? Not time. High blood pressure, high blood sugar, smoking, and other factors are the culprits. They damage arteries in ways that can lead to heart attack, stroke, impotence, and memory loss. What keeps arteries young? Just what you'd guess: a healthy diet and exercise.

After you examine your earlobes, check your face for small, yellowish patches or bumps around the eyelids (xanthelasmas). These are cholesterol deposits, and they're another warning of arterial aging. Here's what happens. An unhealthy lifestyle -- including smoking, not exercising, and eating empty, saturated-fat-filled calories -- can cause nicks in the smooth inner layer of your arteries. Your body tries to repair those nicks using cholesterol as a kind of plaster. But if the cholesterol is the bad (LDL) kind, it triggers an inflammatory reaction that signals white cells to invade the area. The result is an irritated mess of plaque that encourages a blood clot to form. That clot can suddenly block the entire artery. To help prevent the whole process, take the RealAge test and get your RealAge Plan. And don't just read it -- follow it.

SOURCES: YOU: The Owner's Manual. Roizen, M. F., Oz, M. C., New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

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