The American Diabetes Association wants you to know your risk for diabetes and heart disease and wants you to know how to lower it. The ADA is launching a new prevention initiative - CheckUp America. If you’re overweight, have unhealthy cholesterol levels, smoke, have high blood glucose or high blood pressure, you have risk factors for diabetes. But you may have other risk factors such as age, race, gender and family history of diabetes.

The ADA offers learning tabs on the problems and risk factors you may have that you and your physician can work together to control and manage. Get more information on subjects such as understanding high blood glucose and managing cholesterol, the role of physical activity and quitting smoking in risk management. You can also download their CheckUp Chart to help you track your cardiometabolic risk factors to lower your risk for diabetes and heart disease.

CheckUp America

It’s never too late to get an education - or your diploma.

When Ed Daubenspeck’s father died in 1919, leaving Ed and his 16 siblings, Ed left school to work to help support the family. Ed had only just graduated from eighth grade.

But today, at the age of 99 years, Ed has his high school diploma and the respect of all who know him for his perseverance and good example in pursuing his diploma despite the fact that 88 years have passed since he was last a student.

Read the AP story at Fox News.

Identity theft is a growing concern and scammers are finding new ways every day to get sensitive personal information on consumers. With that information they can run up charges on credit card accounts, deplete bank accounts and set up new accounts in the name of the victim.

AARP has an online seminar called Preventing Identity Theft. To take the course you will need a network connection of 56kps or faster and you must be using Internet Explorer 6 or higher, Netscape 7.2 or higher or an equivalent browser. I was able to take the course using the Firefox browser.

In this course, you will:

* Know what identity theft is
* Do a wallet check to protect yourself from identity theft
* Take steps to protect yourself from identity theft in your home and on the road
* Recognize early warnings of identity theft
* Take the first steps if you’re a victim of identity theft
* Have the numbers to call to get help or more information

For more information on the course go here

When you are ready to take the course, click on the link at the AARP page or click here.

If there was an emergency and someone was having a heart attack, could you perform life-saving CPR?

New from the American Heart Association is CPR Anytime, a learn-at-home program teaching basic CPR skills through a Skills Practice DVD and an inflatable practice mannequin. The home instruction takes 22 minutes, as opposed to the formal 4 hour training classes.

The program’s effectiveness was studied by Science Direct, to see if training for CPR could be adequately accomplished through a home learning program.

Older adults learned the fundamental skills of CPR with this training program in about half an hour. If properly distributed, this type of training could produce a significant increase in the number of lay responders who can perform CPR.

Family and Friends CPR Anytime American Heart Association