The final nine episodes of HBO's Sunday night hit The Sopranos feature the stuff of life. You know -- blood, guts, betrayal, angst, and cancer. It's not quite the stuff of my life, well, except for the cancer part.

Actor Vince Curatola, who plays Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni, powerfully weaves cancer into the end of this popular television drama. Diagnosed with lung cancer, his character is given three months to live -- in a prison hospital bed.

Johnny Sack says very little in the last episodes. He does gasp to his wife in episode two, "I'm very, very sick," but he lacks the lung capacity to muster up much more. He disease is considered stage four.

The cancer depictions -- one shows Johnny Sack shuffling down a long corridor in his hospital robe, oxygen tank dragging behind -- are right on, say those who've taken an early peek at the shows. And reportedly, the cancer scenes pretty accurately reflect the concerns of the larger culture -- where cancer has become an epidemic that sadly, won't come to end in nine episodes.

In April, I'm headed to Canyon Ranch, the world's most renowned health and wellness destination. In addition to day spas and residential communities in various U.S. cities, there are two resort locations -- one in Tucson, Arizona and one in Lenox, Massachusetts. This is the one I will visit.

My several-day stay at Canyon Ranch comes with a bit of a breast cancer twist, and I'll tell you all about it in a future post.

But right now, I want to offer up a few healthy living tips offered by the professionals at these luxurious getaways. Featured on the company's website, these tips might just get you motivated in a healthful direction.

Breathe

Proper, natural breathing can improve relaxation. When breathing deeply, imagine the new supply of oxygen flowing through your body. Remember to exhale slowly. This can help relax your body further. Breathing should never feel forced or unnatural.

Just Ducky

If you're looking for a quick lunchtime workout that leaves you office-ready or a convenient exercise routine that allows you to be good to go at a moment's notice, jump into the nearest swimming pool. Carolyn Collman, M.S., exercise physiologist and aquatic therapist at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, says you can get in the swim without getting soaked. "Water exercises are the perfect solution for a high-efficiency, no-hassle workout for almost everyone. An older adult new to exercise or a sedentary person can benefit from it as much as an Olympic athlete and everyone in between," she says.

Fat-Free Isn't Sugar-Free

Many foods marketed as fat-free and low-fat are loaded with sugar. Learn to read food labels to determine whether the fat-free choice is really a healthy choice. Many products are replacing partially hydrogenated oils with sugar to compensate for lost flavor. The average person consumes twenty teaspoons of added sugar a day – that's 156 pounds a year!

You Are How Much You Eat

A recent study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has confirmed what Canyon Ranch has espoused for years: portion size directly impacts your weight. Using scales, measuring cups and spoons is a useful way of learning what a proper portion looks like. You can also use these common objects to help you visualize healthy portion sizes:

• Palm of your hand or deck of cards for a portion of lean meat, chicken, or fish
• One-inch cube (dice) for the portion of cheese
• D-cell battery for a portion of dried fruit or salad dressing
• Tennis ball for rice or potatoes
• Large marshmallow for salad dressing
• Ping-pong ball for the serving of nuts or nut butter

There's more where these came from. Go see for yourself. Or stop back here -- I promise to share more.

In a Phase III trial involving 878 lung cancer patients, the drug bevacizumab, known as Avastin, increased the overall survival rate to 35 percent when combined with the chemotherapy drugs paclitaxel and carboplatin. Patients who were given paclitaxel and carboplatin without Avastin had a 15 percent chance of responding to treatment.

Two months ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved Avastin as a first-line treatment for patients with inoperable, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer. Avastin works by stopping the formation of blood vessels that feed oxygen and nutrients needed for tumor growth. Because the drug is a targeted therapy, in that it leaves healthy tissue alone while going after cancer cells, some of the traditional side-effects from conventional chemotherapy, such as hair loss, nausea, or vomiting, are avoided.

According to Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Chief of Hematology/Oncology's Dr. Joan Schiller, "Twenty years ago, we thought no treatment could help patients with advanced lung cancer. Ten years ago, we found that chemotherapy could improve survival of these patients. Now, we are finding out that this very unique drug called Avastin can also help improve survival even more. Avastin is the first of this very exciting family of drugs to be approved for lung cancer, and there are several other drugs of this type under development which may prove to work even better."

It's no secret exercise is beneficial for just about everyone. So it should come as no surprise that researchers reported Monday that moderate, regular exercise can help women combat some of the side effects of breast cancer radiation treatment.

Researchers found that breast cancer patients who walked briskly 20 to 45 minutes three to five times per week during treatment maintained healthy blood cells. Red blood cells and hemoglobin -- which carry oxygen -- often suffer during radiation treatment. And those who do not exercise lose significant oxygen capacity.

This study, published in the journal Cancer, is the first to look into the effect of exercise during breast cancer radiation treatment. It rounds out research that already shows exercise can help prevent breast cancer and can also help women recover from the disease.

I know I'm stressed out but I didn't know cancer cells could be stressed out too. Most cancer cells exhibit overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). The researches thought that this ROS was responsible for helping the cancer cell survive and grow. Dr. Peng Huang from the Department of Molecular Pathology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center thinks that increased ROS generation may also make cancer cells highly vulnerable to some treatment agents that would not be toxic to normal cells.

In the September issue of the journal Cancer Cell the research showed that scientists have found a way to take advantage the oxidative stress common in cancer cells. This approach has the therapeutic advantage of selectively targeting cancer cells while exhibiting minimal toxicity in normal cells.

I don't know the difference between regular stress and oxidative stress but whatever way we can mess with a cancer cell and have it be less toxic to the body is fine with me!