Telling your doctor or nurse about pain is not a sign of weakness and you should not accept pain as a normal part of having cancer. You have a right as a cancer patient who is experiencing pain to ask for pain relief. When you are free of pain, you can sleep and eat better, enjoy the company of those around you, and can continue on with work and hobbies.

If your doctor suggests no other options to reduce your pain after discussing it with him, then ask to see a pain specialist or ask your doctor to consult with a pain specialist which may be an oncologist, anesthesiologist, neurologist, or neurosurgeon.

Use a pain scale when talking with your doctor. For example, your pain might be 5 on a scale of 0 to 10. Other important factors you should discuss with your doctor include ...

I'm writing today to share with you a victory -- a diet and exercise victory. Let me begin with a little background.

I've always been in the normal weight range for my height. I am about 5'7" and prior to each of my two pregnancies, I weighed 142. For me, that translates into size eight clothing, size six for some oddly made-garments. I've always been generally happy with my weight, and I've never obsessed about the numbers on the scale. Yet there's been one area that's bothered me ever since my first baby was born -- my tummy. Now I like to use the excuse that my babies were big -- 10 pounds, nine ounces and 10 pounds, two ounces -- but clinging to this explanation did nothing to remove the loose skin from my middle. And for years, I guess I wasn't ready to work at whittling it away.

Enter cancer. Research shows many breast cancer patients gain weight during treatment -- sometimes up to 30 pounds. And while I never did gain this much, my weight has increased over the past almost three years. Perhaps it was hormones, the chemotherapy drugs, the anti-depressant I just stopped taking. Regardless, I didn't like the extra weight. So I tried to do something about it -- and about that pesky tummy too. And herein lies the victory.

Take it from Bob Greene, the supercoach who helped Oprah get into the best shape of her life, when he says we all can acquire great health and great fitness -- without calorie counting and deprivation and hardship. He details it all in his new book The Best Life Diet, and he shares a series of how-to guides in the January 2007 issue of Oprah Magazine.

One tool Greene offers as we take on the new year is a hunger scale -- to help us avoid eating mindlessly, to encourage us to get in touch with our hunger, to train us away from always watching calories.

The scale goes like this:

10: Stuffed. Approaching nausea.
9: Very uncomfortably full. Need to loosen clothing.
8: Uncomfortably full. Bloated.
7: Full. A bit uncomfortable.
6: Perfectly comfortable and satisfied.
5: Comfortable. More or less satisfied but could eat more.
4: Slightly uncomfortable. Beginning to feel signs of hunger.
3: Uncomfortably hungry. Stomach is rumbling.
2: Very uncomfortable, irritable, and unable to concentrate.
1: Weak and light-headed. Stomach acid is churning.

Greene says we should eat only when we find ourselves feeling 1, 2, 3, or 4. He instructs us to put our forks down at 5 and 6 and wait for our next scheduled meal. For those trying to lose weight, he says stop eating at 5. This is the point at which you're eating less than your body is burning.

The bikini turns 60 this month and makes news not just for its birthday but also for its new feature -- a built-in alarm to warn wearers to get out of the sun. Not all bikinis will talk -- but those made by Canadian company Solestrom will. Solestrom has created a new bikini that goes on sale next month with a UV meter built into its belt and an alarm that sounds when it's time to seek shade. The meter on the $190 bikini displays a level of UV intensity on a scale from 0 to 20. Three to five is moderate strength, eight to 10 is very high, and anything above 11 is extreme. A person's sensitivity to UV depends mainly on skin type so this scale operates in general terms.

Despite increasing awareness of the sun's dangers, sales remain strong for the bikini. So Solestrom developed this suit to ease some of the worries about the sun's damaging rays. They have already been met with high demand from Australia and South Africa -- where skin cancer rates are highest. The United States -- now in the loop too -- has about 1 million new skin cancer cases each year.