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IS YOUR DESK CHAIR SHORTENING YOUR LIFE?

Your desk chair might be a mortal enemy. Same with the driver's seat or your La-Z-Boy. It's not so much the size or shape of your perch - it's all about how long you sit on it. When researchers looked at how much sitting people did over the course of 12 years, they found that people whose butts met chairs for most of the time, most of their days, died sooner and with more pain than people who moved around. Even if they also exercised for 30 minutes every day, chair dwellers couldn't bring their mortality rate down to the level of someone who sat for only a quarter of the day. You can, however, unseat this killer. If you live at your desk, at least get up and walk around frequently. It also keeps your head clear, and you never know what you'll see or learn (about office gossip or actual work: Innovations may pop into your head as you see your colleagues). And keep working out. Exercise does get you ahead: Among people who sat for the same percentage of time each day, active people (read: exercisers) lived longer and with less disability than inactive ones. Don't just bump up how long you're at the gym, also aim to be more active when you're not in there. Moving from dining-room chair to Barcalounger or doing tortilla-chip curls (moving your hand from chip bowl to your mouth) doesn't count. We're talking gardening, walking the dog or playing freeze tag with your kids (or someone else's). The equation is simple: Watch less, play more, live more.

THE BREAKFAST DRINK THAT MAKES YOU SLIM

If a great breakfast still leaves you hungrier than a teenage football star after practice, look at what's in your glass. The difference between fruit juice and skim milk at your morning meal could mean the difference between buttoning your pants and having to buy new "skinny" ones. In a small study of overweight people, those who drank about 20 ounces of skim milk with breakfast ate less at lunch than the folks who drank that much fruit juice with their morning meal. Milk drinkers also felt fuller and more satisfied right after they ate. What's the magic? The effect is most likely thanks to the whey and casein proteins that are in milk; they're better at quelling hunger than the carbs in fruit drinks. If 20 ounces of milk is more than you can stomach at that hour, or if you can't drink it due to lactose intolerance or other reasons, don't worry. There are more ways to introduce lean protein into your morning meal than there are days to do it. One favourite is to add an egg. Here's why you'll love it, too: In one study, people who ate two scrambled eggs and toast (make sure yours is whole wheat!) rather than the same number of calories in the form of a bagel and cream cheese, dropped 65 per cent more weight. Other easy, tasty, schedule-friendly ways to put protein in your mornings: Add silken tofu to your breakfast smoothie or put yogurt under your berries or on top of your cereal.

LIGHT CIGARETTES MAY BE WORSE THAN THE REAL THING

Cigarette smoke dumps more than 4,000 chemicals into your body, including arsenic and cyanide (yes, rat poison). So it's tempting to assume that until you quit smoking, it's better to smoke "light" than regular cigarettes. The truth: These aren't any healthier. And they may even stop you from kicking your habit. A new study found that people who switched to light cigarettes were more likely to attempt quitting - but were 46 per cent less (yes, LESS) successful at quitting than non-switchers. We're not surprised. If you really want to quit, here are the bare bones of the most successful plan (find details at RealAge.com): 1. Don't quit for a month. Instead, start proving to yourself that you can feel better and can do something important for yourself with the healthy habit of walking 30 minutes a day, every day for a month. 2. Find a quitting buddy, and touch base every day. You're more likely to make a permanent change when you have support. 3. Ask your doctor about stop-smoking pills. Only 2 per cent of people who quit "cold turkey" stop the first time. Use nicotine patches and anticraving pills (buproprion) when your quit date comes around, and the success rate jumps to 60 per cent. 4. Tally the benefits. Within 24 hours of quitting, your heart attack risk decreases. In a year, your risk of coronary disease drops to half that of a still-smoker. And the wrinkles and other signs that your blood vessels are aging fade, so you look and feel significantly younger - more than five years younger within about two years of being smoke-free.

STOP SNEEZING: NO DRUGS, NO DROWSINESS

If the first cold snap nixed what made you sneeze all fall, then why are you still sniffling? When it comes to allergies, what's indoors can be just as bad, if not worse. The dust mites that love to live in your bed, your pillow and other soft places you've been also can trigger allergies that leave you with a drippy nose and puffy eyes (the only good news is that they don't snore). These mites feed on skin cells that slough off you and into the fabrics you rub against, and it's their poop you are allergic to. But you may be able to turn your allergy symptoms down a notch by turning up the heat when you wash your bedding. Set your washer temp on "hot," and put the rinse cycle on "extra." When bed sheets were washed in either super-hot (140 degrees Fahrenheit) water or in steam, 100 per cent of household dust mites in that bedding were killed. Not bad. Hot cycles worked best with dog dander, too, as did an extra rinse cycle. If your washer doesn't have a temperature gauge, choose the hottest setting and measure the water with a meat thermometer. Also, put a little extra potent something between you and the mites: Cover your pillow and mattress with 1-micron cases that look and feel like pillowcases. These keep the offenders at a distance between washes.

TO STOP YOUR SPOUSE FROM SNORING, TRY THIS

When your spouse's snoring is louder than a heavy metal concert, there is a device that can give both of you some rest. The gold standard in anti-snoring, better-sleeping devices is known as a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure). It's designed for people whose snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea - that's when a person stops breathing during sleep for more than 10 seconds at a time. The trouble? It's about as popular as overboiled broccoli at a 5-year-old's birthday party. Could be thanks to the fact that it looks like a cross between an airplane oxygen mask and a Second World War gas mask. And it's hooked up to a machine with tubes. Yeah, it's that sexy. But here's the thing: Sleep apnea not only contributes to daytime sleepiness (and all the nodding off in meetings and doing less than your best that goes with that), it also leads to high blood pressure, headaches and an increased risk of stroke, blood clots, depression and abnormal heartbeats. Tell all that to your spouse, and chances are that he or she still won't use this device. So try this: Tell him or her that using a CPAP can improve golf scores. No kidding. A new study found that use of a CPAP dropped golfers' handicaps. The better the golfer, the bigger the drop (among better golfers, handicaps dropped from an average of 9.2 to 6.3). How? Sleep apnea interferes with some cognitive functions that are essential in golf. What else works: Lose 10 per cent of the weight gained since age 18, and 30 per cent of the nonbreathing episodes will disappear.