It's a fountainhead of frustration for all teachers everywhere. It's that student who has created nothing but chaos in your classroom saying he's seen the error in his ways and asking for the lengthy list of missed assignments as well your help in changing his failing grade.

With six weeks left of school.What's more frustrating than the tight timeframe is that in most cases the student isn't really remorseful. He's playing the game, saying what he thinks needs to be said after being goaded by a guidance counselor, grounded by a parent or given an ultimatum by a parole officer.But enlightened educators focus on something far more important than the reason for the request. They focus on the fact that every student, in essence, is still a work in progress and therefore deserves something that he won't always get outside of school.A fresh start.In fact, sometimes an educator's biggest ally is the willing suspension of disbelief needed to give someone unworthy of one a fresh start. Sometimes that kindness in itself can transform the most disingenuous jerk into a rather decent guy.And if the granting of a fresh start doesn't create a lasting change, what's the loss? The time tabulating the missed assignments? A few after-school one-on-one sessions?But when it does, that fountainhead of frustration transforms into a grand wellspring of satisfaction, for enlightened educators know the greatest gauge of education is the improvement of individual, not state-mandated test scores.I share my fresh-start teaching philosophy because it can be applied to health and fitness as well. But this article is not going to exhort those who haven't been exercising enough or eating well to learn to be internally gracious and grant themselves a fresh start.While that is a worthy sentiment, it has been expressed in columns past. Today, I'd like to apply the fresh-start philosophy to the articles you read as a way to help your health. When you engage in this sort of reading, it is imperative that you do not become clouded by articles past and give every new notion a fresh start.I was reminded of this fact recently when I read an article posted on Medical News Today.com titled "'Bad Cholesterol' Not as Bad as People Think."Researchers examined 52 healthy, nonexercising adults from the ages of 60 to 69 after workouts designed to add muscle mass and discovered an odd correlation: those who gained the most muscle also had the highest levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or "bad" cholesterol in their blood streams.Steve Reichman, a researcher in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Texas A&M University called this a "very unexpected result," because it shows that "you do need a certain amount of LDL to gain more muscle mass."So is "bad" cholesterol truly bad if it is needed to increase or maintain muscle mass, an absolute necessity for optimal aging?In light of this recent research, that answer may well be based on the amount. What medicos knew before the Texas A&M research is that LDL cholesterol carries other cholesterol from the liver to the cells and that too much in the bloodstream creates a plaque buildup in the arteries that often causes heart disease and heart attacks.But how much is too much?Reichman's research didn't reveal that, but he did say that "We need to change this idea of LDL always being an evil thing."In other words, to use the previous teaching analogy, we need to grant LDL a fresh start yet we can't forget that an excess of it creates a condition where we could fall prey to the leading cause of death: heart disease.That's why recent research that shows the ingestion of apples reduces levels of LDL merits mention.The study performed at Florida State University used 160 females between the ages of 45 to 65 years old as subjects. Some were given 75 grams of dried apples to eat each day for a whole year. Others were given the same amount of dried prunes.In six months, the apple-eating group had experienced a collective drop of LDL cholesterol of 23 percent. Additionally, HDL cholesterol, the "good" kind, increased by 4 percent.Another result of this study may merit that we also look at all dried fruit with fresh eyes. For years, it has been seen as something to eat only occasionally because it's so calorie dense that liberal use can cause weight gain.The subjects given the 75 grams of dried apple a day were adding 240 calories to their diets per day. At the end of one year, this could have theoretically caused a collective weight increase of 25 pounds.It did not.Instead, the group lost an average of 3.3 pounds, a result so significant that the lead researcher wrote: "Reducing body weight is an added benefit to daily apple intake."