Health Beat
The latest health news and what it means to you

The findings: A commonly used tool to determine heart attack risk isn’t all that reliable when it comes to assessing women, according to a Johns Hopkins University study. Researchers found that the Framingham Risk Estimate (FRE), which is based on factors such as age, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, failed to identify at least one-third of the women in the study as high risk. Contrary to the clean-bill-of-health FRE scores, computed tomography (CT) scans revealed that these women already suffered from atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries—a major risk factor for coronary heart disease.
What you should do: Ask your doctor about your heart disease risk factors and whether you’d benefit from a CT scan to screen for atherosclerosis. The study’s authors suggest that people who have a low FRE score and two or more risk factors get a cardiac CT scan.

The findings: Eating more than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day can reduce your risk for stroke by 26 percent, according to a report recently published in The Lancet. After reviewing data from eight studies that tracked more than 257,000 patients, the researchers found that eating three to five daily servings of produce cuts risk of stroke by 11 percent compared with eating fewer servings—but the most significant benefits kick in when daily fruit and vegetable intake increases to more than five.
What you should do: Start now to lower your stroke risk by adding vegetables and fruits to your snacks and meals. Put seasonal fruits and vegetables on your grocery list. And if you have a garden, plant some vegetables to keep you in fresh supply through the summer.

The findings: Healthy habits cut lymphoma risk. Canadian researchers evaluated more than 1,000 patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and more than 3,000 healthy subjects to assess their physical activity, weight and calorie intake. Among the women, physical activity had the greatest impact, with the most active women enjoying a 41 percent lower risk for lymphoma over their least-active counterparts, according to the study in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Obese women also faced a 36 percent higher risk for the disease.
What you should do: Get moving and maintain a healthy weight!