July's 5 best body & mind boosters

1 GET SMART SMILE ADVICE

Wondering which tooth-beaching technique is best or why your gums bleed when you brush? On Dental Awareness Day, July 18, you can get free one-on-one advice from a dentist by calling the Smile Line, at 800-SMILE-33. The hot line is staffed from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET by dentists affiliated with the Academy of General Dentistry. The rest of the year, you can ask questions Online at agd.org: you'll get an answer emailed back to you within 24 hours. 2 DITCH THAT HANDS-FREE PHONE

Think using a hands-free phone behind the wheel is sari? Think again. In a recent study at the University of Utah, a driving-simulation test showed that drivers using a hands-free cell phone reacted more slowly to braking and caused more rear-end collisions than those not using a phone. So save routine chats for the home or office, and if the call is crucial, pull over. 3 want to be more efficient? Quit multitasking

Juggling many projects is inefficient, according to research at the University of Michigan. When people were asked to switch back and forth between tasks, such as doing math problems and sorting pictures, they took longer to complete each job than when they worked on them one at a time. "When you shift your attention from one thing to another, you have to remember where you stopped and then start your train of thought again," says David Meyer, Ph.D., an author of the study. "If you have tasks that can be done in modest chunks of time--say, 45 minutes--it's better to stick with just one from start to finish." 4 MEMORIZE ANYTHING WITH THIS QUICK TRICK

Maybe you've thought of something for your to-do list but don't have paper and pencil handy, or you need to remember talking points for a meeting. Try this proven memorization technique from a study at University College in London: Picture yourself walking down a road you know well, and then put images of the things you need to remember at specific spots along the route. When it's time to recall those items, mentally retrace your steps. The researchers found that many people with good memories aren't more intelligent than the rest of us, they simply use savvy spatial techniques. 5 lower your cancer risk: cut meat and dessert

A new study found that women who ate the most red meat, desserts, refined grains, and fats were 46 percent more apt to get colon cancer than those who ate the smallest amounts of these foods. He culprits: carcinogenic substances (such as nitrates in processed meats) and increased insulin secretion from sugar and refined grains. To be safe, eat fish, poultry, whole grains, and produce (shown here) instead.