Is there a difference between, “I have blue paint in my bedroom,” and “My bedroom walls are painted blue?” A gallon of paint in the closet or on the floor in your bedroom verifies the first quote. An empty can and blue walls verify the second. Maybe this isn’t the best analogy, but you can apply it to the calcium in your body, which is either part of your bones or used as an electrolyte, or not. It’s either where it belongs, or not.

The heart is a muscle, the most important one on the list. Legs that hurt from pedaling a bike all over the county or biceps that burn from curls are little more than an annoyance. A heart that hurts can mean something more. If you happen to be a cyclist, the odds are in your favor that your heart won’t hurt.

Grapes have been around for a long time, their attributes being praised by the Egyptians six thousand years ago. The healing powers of grapes had been tapped by the ancient Greeks, usually in the form of wine. Folk healers in Europe used the leaves and sap from the vines to treat skin and eye diseases and to stop the inflammation and pain from hemorrhoids.

Some of us know inflammation too well. When getting out of bed in the morning becomes an auditory event in your joints that rivals a flamenco dancer’s castanets, you know inflammation. What you may not know, or at least not realize, is that your weight has something to do with it.

Insulin response? Huh? It’s just what it says, the way the body responds to insulin and the challenges that excite it in the first place. Insulin, as you recall, is a polypeptide hormone secreted by the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. (A polypeptide, by the way, is made of two or more amino acids and becomes part of a protein.)

Have you ever stopped to think there might be a difference between aging and getting old? Some ancient texts declare old age a virtue and a blessing, commanding the elderly to be respected for their wisdom, regardless of their scholarship. When your cheese gets old, it’s time to dump it; but when it ages, it reaches perfection, right? When things get old, they might no longer be useful or in style.

Well, if you have half a mind, you have a whole hippocampus. It’s the part of the brain in charge of long-term memory (Where are the car keys?) and spatial relations (Will this car fit into that parking space?). It’s shaped like a horseshoe and straddles both of the brain’s hemispheres.

The human skeleton offers shape and protection to the body. It supplies a place for organs to attach or to be supported. It comprises 206 bones, the largest of which is the thigh (femur). It makes up about 15% of your body weight, part of which is water. This fifteen percent refers to ideal body weight, not to a 400-pound behemoth who is less than six feet tall.

Botanically a fruit and culinarily a vegetable, the tomato belongs to the nightshade family, a group that includes potatoes, eggplants, paprika, chili peppers, tobacco and petunias. These plants are known for possessing a wide range of chemicals called alkaloids, some of which have medicinal or toxic properties. Among the common alkaloids are nicotine, cocaine, morphine and quinine.