LIVE LONG, PROSPER? JUST TREK THIS WAY

A New Study Provides a Checklist for Living Robustly into Your 80s.

In middle age, avoid cigarettes and excess alcohol. Get -- and keep
- -- a spouse. Stay thin and active. Maintain normal blood pressure.

Those were key characteristics of long-lifers in one of the biggest
studies done on aging.

As part of the research, more than 5,800 Japanese-American men were
tracked for four decades, but scientists say the findings likely
apply to all men and women.

"There appears to be a lot we can do about modifying our risk and
increasing the odds for aging more healthfully," says researcher
Bradley Willcox from the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu.

Most participants were in their 50s when the project began, and they
underwent periodic health exams for the next 40 years.

About 58 percent of the men died before 85. But about 11 percent hit
85 without any serious mental or physical conditions, including
diabetes, stroke, heart disease or cancer. Those men shared the same
characteristics -- not smoking, staying thin, etc. -- in middle age.

Prostate Treatment

Thousands of men undergo radiation treatments each year after
surgery for prostate cancer.

But new research questions the value of the therapy, which can cause
bowel and urinary complications.

Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the
study found that radiation did not increase a man's survival time or
slow the spread of cancer to other organs.

However, the therapy did cut the chances of cancer returning to the prostate.

The bottom line? Men have a lot to consider when they weigh the
risks and benefits of radiation.

A man has to "make the decision based on whether he would want to
trade off perhaps some bowel or urinary complications to reduce the
risk of his cancer coming back," says Dr. Ian Thompson, a urologist
at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Critics of the study -- which included 425 men -- say that it might
have been too small to detect a benefit in survival.

Here is an '80s flashback we could do without.

Researchers at the University of Florida say cocaine use is rising
to levels not seen since the drug's heydays in the 1980s.

Consider these statistics. Cocaine was cited as the cause of death
in 150 out of 100,000 deaths in Florida during 2000.

Last year, that rate had nearly doubled to almost 300 out of 100,000 deaths.

The fatalities are rising steeply in college communities and
upper-class coastal areas such as Melbourne and West Palm Beach,
says Dr. Mark Gold from UF's College of Medicine.

"We are in the early stages of a new cocaine epidemic that is being
led by the rich and famous and students with large amounts of
disposable income," Gold says. "[The new trend] is responsible for
more emergency room visits and more cocaine-related deaths than we
have seen at any time since the last cocaine epidemic."