‘Churches and Temples of Mid-City Los Angeles’ is the subject of a daylong tour led by Elinor Oswald on Thursday, November 16. The bus departs from Los Liones Drive at 9:45 a.m. and returns between 3 and 4 p.m. En route, Oswald will recall the development of the vast diversity of religions in L.A. destinations, including Angelus Temple in Echo Park, renowned for its founder Aimee Semple McPherson, who fed thousands during the Depression; Wilshire Boulevard Temple (1922), once the sanctuary of Edgard F. Magnum and renowned for the Hugo Ballin murals; St. Basil’s Catholic Church (1972), where medieval and modern design elements mix for a stunning effect; and St. Sophia’s Cathedral (1948), the Skouras family’s gift to the Greek community. The $35 cost includes transportation, tours, a gourmet lunch at Pap Christo’s Greek restaurant and a $15 gift to the Neighborhood Youth Association. For reservations, mail a check payable to NYA to Elinor Oswald, 14964 Camarosa Dr., Pacific Palisades, 90272. The deadline is November 2.

‘When we die, what mark do we leave?’ Lynn Redgrave asks this question at the beginning of her one-woman play ‘Nightingale,’ which was inspired by a visit to the graves of her grandparents in London. Disturbed by her discovery that acid rain had washed away their names on the headstones, Redgrave worries if and how her maternal grandmother, Beatrice (‘Beanie’) Kempson, will be remembered. ‘Like a nightingale, she’ll sit unnoticed,’ Redgrave (as herself) tells us in the prologue. So, she creates a fictional character called Mildred Asher through whom she remembers her grandmother. Told in 11 short scenes that represent fragments of Mildred’s life (from 1904 to 1973), ‘Nightingale’ has many tender, poignant moments, but is, at other times, cliched and slow-paced. Redgrave sets out to tell a personal family story but does not explore in depth some of the more complex relationships, such as the one between Mildred and her daughter Rose (who would be Redgrave’s mother, Rachel). Ultimately, what keeps the audience engaged is Redgrave’s artful performance, the way she gradually transforms from a naive young girl into a fragile, desolate woman, with only brief pauses between scenes. We are witness to Mildred’s emotional vulnerability and loneliness as she struggles to fulfill her duty as wife and mother. Through Redgrave’s subtle movements, gestures and expressions–the way she freezes up when her husband is around and says his name with a heavy, repulsive sigh (‘ERR-ol’)–we feel how deeply disappointed Mildred is with this life. ‘Just close your eyes and think of England,’ Mildred remembers her mother saying, an indirect reference to the night she will lose her virginity to her husband. Mildred is alone, emotionally disconnected from her family. Not even her older sister, Ethleen (‘played’ by Redgrave), shows her any affection but pities her and talks to her in a patronizing tone. Mildred finally finds sanctuary and discovers sexual desire while on a trip in the country with her children, but she is left yearning for a life that is out of reach. ‘Why do I weep for that which I cannot have?’ she asks, ‘For that which I will never know?’ Though Redgrave is always alone on stage, sometimes when she’s interacting with another, invisible character, she creates such an intimate space that she makes us feel like the other person is really there. When Mildred’s one joy–her son, Mark–is taken from her, we see her spirit die. Redgrave moves slowly across the stage and sits down gently on a bench, with one arm slightly bent in a fragile, arthritic way, her voice ever-so-slightly raspy as she concludes Mildred’s story. The play’s painful, ‘quiet’ and poetic moments are juxtaposed with some lighter, comical lines that Redgrave delivers deliberately. ‘Marriage seemed such an exciting idea until it happened,’ Mildred says. The intimate Mark Taper Forum is an appropriate venue for this show, but the sparse set’s backdrop–a collage of projected Victorian images on tall, staggered screens through which Redgrave enters and exits the stage–is dizzying and distracting after a while. As a playwright, Redgrave is the author of ‘Shakespeare for My Father.’ She comes from a famous family of actors, including her parents Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, sister Vanessa, brother Corin, and nieces Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Jemma Redgrave. ‘Nightingale,’ directed by Joseph Hardy, continues through November 19 at the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles. For tickets, call (213) 628-2772 or go to centertheatregroup.org.

What makes The Pink Party, a benefit hosted by Palisadian Elyse Walker three weeks ago at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, different from the many fundraisers held every night in L.A.? The amount of money that was raised in one evening by a single individual who is NOT on Forbes list of 100 wealthiest Americans, or even a celebrity. While Walker, 39, could be a lady who lunches or just works on expanding her successful women’s retail operation–which now occupies four storefronts on Antioch– she chooses instead to try and make a difference. Her motivation? Walker’s mother, Barbara Feder, died of ovarian cancer at the age of 42. Last year 500 people attended her first Pink Party, including California’s First Lady Maria Shriver, an Elyse Walker client. Just under $500,000 was raised. Over 600 people attended this year’s event, which brought in over $700,000 for the Cedar-Sinai Women’s Cancer Research Institute. The silent auction alone garnered $125,000, and while some jewelry was thrown into the mix this year, the big draw were the handbags donated by Bottega Veneta, Yves St. Laurent, Celine, Etro, Robert Cavalli, Valentino, Gucci and Jimmy Choo. The opening bid on a green ostrich handbag donated by Dolce & Gabbana was $2,500. Retail value: $5,995. Also hot was a Prada crocodile bag, which retails for $8,775. The most expensive item in the silent auction was a 1955 Andy Warhol lithograph featuring a shoe made out of gold leaf. Donated by the Leslie Sacks Gallery, it was valued at $15,000. The bidding started at $10,000 and was won by Walker’s aunt Trudi. Palisadians who attended this year’s event include Sugar Ray Leonard and his wife Bernadette, Caroline and Chris O’Donnell, Kimberly and Dennis Quaid, Melissa Rivers, Frances Fisher, James Worthy, Liza Utter and Tom Pernice, Didi Carr-Reuben with her daughter Gable, Laura M. and Mark Geller, former Chamber of Commerce president Saad Mazbouti, owner of Denton’s Jewelers, with his wife Yvette. Also in attendance was last year’s Chamber president Sandy Eddy, who served on The Pink Party host committee, as well as Arnie Wishnick, executive director of the Chamber, with his wife Cathie. ‘It was nice to see so many Palisadians open their pocketbooks for this cause,’ Wishnick said. Elyse Walker is currently the single largest fundraiser for Cedars-Sinai WCRI. The funds raised at this year’s Pink Party will be used to screen women at high risk for breast, cervical and ovarian cancer. The money will also help pay for mammograms, pap smears and ultrasounds. ‘There is no test for ovarian cancer, ‘ said Walker. ‘It is a symptom-driven disease. Women need to know what to watch out for, which is why we are helping to fund community outreach programs as well.’ At the Viceroy fundraiser Walker also announced that some of the funds would be used to help get the first cervical cancer vaccine into doctors’ offices. In June the FDA approved Gardasil, developed to protect against four HPV’s (human papiliomavirus), which together cause 70 percent of cervical cancers and other genital diseases. The vaccine, which to date has been widely tested only on females between the ages of 9 and 26, consists of a series of three shots given over a six-month period. Studies have found it to be almost 100 percent effective in preventing cancer of the cervix, vulva and vagina as well as genital warts; research also indicates the vaccine provides coverage for up to five years. The expectation is that it will eventually be administered as routinely as other vaccinations such as those for measles and mumps. Since the vaccine has no effect on 30 percent of cervical cancers, young girls and women are advised to continue to get regular pap tests. The vaccine itself is made up of protein from the outer coat of the virus (HPV). One dose costs $120, or $360 for the series of three. It is currently recommended for girls, 11 to 12-years of age, before they become sexually active. This is because the vaccine has been found to be most effective in females who have not yet acquired any of the four types of HPV (some virulent, some not). No test for the virus is currently available. The Pink Party attracted mostly large donors, and a limited number of tickets were available for $500 apiece. Countrywide purchased a corporate sponsorship for $30,000 and In Style magazine, which covered the event, welcomed celebrities, including Nicole Richie and Marcia Cross, one of the stars of ABC’s ‘Desperate Housewives,’ in a poolside tent. The evening had a distinctive disco vibe with nonstop music by DJ AM, keeping the dance floor hopping throughout the evening. There was also entertainment’from the eye-catching go-go dancers on platforms over the pool wearing everything from Courreges boots to fishnet stockings to bikinis’to the continuous big-screen TV running videos of runway fashion shows. Guests were definitely dressed casually. Palisadian Frances Fisher wore jeans and a camisole with pink lace, which she said she sometimes ‘wears to bed.’ While ‘pink attire’ and ‘jeans required’ was the official dress code of the night, what does a fashionista’an arbiter of fashion with a client list of 6,000–wear to her own party? Elyse Walker said she planned her whole wardrobe around her footwear–brown studded platform shoes by Miu Miu, which she knew would “be very comfortable as I would be standing all night.’ Under her gray leather jacket (by Hanii Y) and her multiple strings of bronze beads (Erickson Beamon), Walker, who describes her fashion style as ‘classic’ with ‘an edge,’ wore a knee-length hot pink tunic (Tomas Maier) with a ruffled neckline. The dress was wrapped with a high-waisted brown python belt (Prada), and under it she wore a pair of Seven jeans frayed at the bottom and ‘perfectly ripped up by Sable, who works for me.’ Other fashion standouts included a shocking pink trench coat from T.J.Maxx, a pink vintage boiled wool top, a pale rose-colored cashmere sweater set and a magenta sari. Several of the men wore pink shirts, some made of silk. The real measure of success of any fundraiser in this town is how much of the money ends up going to the cause. Walker said she was pleased that expenses for The Pink Party ran less than 20 percent, down from almost 25 percent last year. Her goal in 2007? ‘We hope to raise at least a million dollars and get costs down even more.’ To make a donation to Cedars-Sinai’s WCRI contact Lori Feldman at.

Pacific Palisades resident Calliope Caloyera Babu-Khan will exhibit her Greek-themed series of mixed-media and large watercolor paintings of gods and goddesses depicting mythological themes at the third annual Women’s Health and Wellness symposium. The event will be held on Saturday, October 21, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Loyola Marymount University, One LMU Drive in Los Angeles. Babu-Khan’s exhibition, entitled “Greece’s Salute to the United States,” will take place in the atrium of the University Hall. The symposium is sponsored by the Basil P. Caloyeras Center for Modern Greek Studies at LMU. The Center was established in 1974 with the purpose of presenting the artistic and cultural contributions of Greece during the last 200 years. Basil P. Caloyeras, Babu-Khan’s father, thought that offering university-level classes on the language, literature, history, music and dance of modern Greece would best serve this purpose. The center was originally endowed by the Caloyeras family, which continues its support today. “My background with Greek, Indian and other cultures has allowed me to develop my sense of color and line, and has influenced my inner expression,” says Babu-Khan, a native of Athens, Greece. “I have explored different techniques using oils, acrylics, drawings, printmaking and collage.” Her basic theme consists of a series of compositions and figures in line contours. Employing positive and negative shapes that often play against each other, she creates patterns of intense color. Her decisive delicacy of line, observing the details of the human form, is an exuberant celebration of life. Babu-Khan, who earned a fine arts degree from UCLA, is married to Shafi Babu-Khan, a native of India who also studied in the United States. In 1980, she established the “India Arts Council” at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, and served as president through 1987. She has been vice president of Women Painters West from 1989-1992. Most recently, Babu-Khan has created a series of “biographical paintings,” which contain elements from the lives of individuals who have inspired her. The one she made for her daughter, Nasreen, a Pisces, has fish representing each year of Nasreen’s life surrounding the colorful geometric shapes. Babu-Khan marked the year that Nasreen’s first child was born in one of the fish. The painting also includes an Indian design to represent Nasreen’s Indian heritage. “Utilizing the language of art, I speak of those unique personalities that have intrigued me,” Babu-Khan says. “They have inspired me and, in turn, I have recorded their achievements and life events.” The artist is currently accepting proposals for biographical paintings and any other projects. Contact: Calliope Caloyera Babu-Khan at 454-4151. For more information on Saturday’s event, contact: Agatha Felactu at 544-1998.

In 1983, a newspaper story appeared in the New York Times about a hustler, David Hampton, who pretended to be Sidney Poitier’s son and convinced several well-heeled New York notables to provide him with shelter, food and money. Hampton was eventually sent to prison for attempted burglary, and author and playwright John Guare wrote a play based on the story. “Six Degrees of Separation” opened off-Broadway to previews at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in 1990. The play quickly moved to Broadway, where it ran until January 5, 1992. A movie based on the play was made in 1993. The show is currently playing at the Morgan-Wixson Theater. The beginning of the production was slow. All of that changed the moment the ‘hustler’ Paul (Catero Alain Colbert) made his entrance. The house was electrified; you could feel the energy that comes with the charisma Colbert brings to the role. All focus was on this pleasant, earnest, agreeable and ultimately dangerous character. Although most audience members already knew the story of Paul’s deception, we still became as gullible as the New Yorkers in the play. Two other actors are deserving of mention for their exceptional performances: Rich (Justin Striechman) and Elizabeth (Anne Jordan), who brought just the right amount of na’vet’ and ‘freshness’ to their roles. Striechman’s soliloquy about being ‘hustled’ by Colbert went from fun to introspective to chillingly sad. Mary Beth Pape in the role of Ouisa settles nicely into a weary-worn character who tries to make some sense out of Paul with her monologue: ‘I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. . . .I am bound’you are bound’to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It’s a profound thought’how Paul found us, how to find the man whose son he claims to be, or perhaps is, although I doubt it. How everyone is a new door, opening into other worlds.’ Even though it’s 15 years old, the play is timeless because it deals with universal themes: those who bring promise and those who believe that promise and that connection’the six degrees of separation. Is there really a difference between the hustler and the hustled? On one level, there are the Kittridges, who are engaged in an accepted ‘business deal,’ buying dinner and trying to talk a man into fronting $2 million to help buy a painting. On another, there is Paul, who, in exchange for a place to stay, promises them a meeting with his famous father. He secures their trust, much like the old-fashioned magic tonic peddlers who secured their sales by making an impassioned pitch. The play is humorous at times, thought-provoking and a vehicle for Colbert to shine. It is a good choice for adult audiences (it includes male nudity). The show runs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through October 28 at the Morgan-Wixson, 2627 Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica. Contact: 828-7519.

Playwright Wendy Graf, who examined the profound emotional and existential implications of her Jewish identity in her first two plays, is debuting the third play in her trilogy on Friday, October 20 at the Lee Strasberg Institute in West Hollywood. ‘All my plays have dealt with identity, including Jewish identity and the search for faith, although this one, ‘Leipzig,’ is the least specifically Jewish,’ Graf says, noting the resurgent focus on identity in our times. ‘Leipzig’ follows the life of a Jewish girl, Eva Kelly, who left Germany during Hitler’s terror and was raised by a Catholic family in Boston. She marries a Catholic, and her past is never spoken of again. The couple’s daughter, Helen, sensing the weight of the secret, unexpectedly opens a tiny crack in her mother’s lifelong subterfuge. Her need to discover the whole of her mother leads Helen to press to understand, an obsession which is accelerated by Eva’s rapidly developing Alzheimer’s. Confused and angry, Helen wonders what her mother’s Jewishness means to her. ‘I don’t want to be a Jew,’ she laments. All of sudden, Helen’s identity is shaken and, in her consoling conversations with ‘Jesus,’ Helen wonders why anyone would want to be a Jew, who century after century have suffered ostracism, hatred and persecution. Graf, a Mandeville Canyon resident, grew up in Brentwood and graduated from Palisades High. Her Jewishness was dormant, as her parents felt it was more important to be an American than a Jew. She began to explore the Jewish part of her identity, and out of that study emerged her first play, ‘The Book of Esther,’ named after the woman from the Old Testament who, despite adversity, stood up and claimed her Jewishness. Having discovered a more profound relationship with her Jewish identity, Graf refined her theme in ‘Leipzig’ through coincidences. Graf, who rediscovered a more profound relationship with her Jewish identity as an adult, refined her theme for ‘Leipzig’ through coincidence. A few years ago, she met a woman who had accompanied her mother, a Jewish refugee, back to her birthplace in Leipzig, Germany. ‘I was fascinated. I wondered how it felt for the mother to return to the home that had turned its back on her. Who and what had she left behind?’ From that interview, Graf went on to talk to many people who had escaped from Europe–some who had returned to their birthplace, others who refused. But all of these biographies were just that, biographies; no theme emerged. ‘The stories that I heard were so fascinating, so full of human drama, but I couldn’t seem to translate it to the stage,’ Graf says. ‘Frustrated with my abortive attempts, I put it away and started on another project. ‘Then someone close to me began to show signs of Alzheimer’s. One day, while still mostly lucid, she turned to me and said ‘What a funny disease this is. I can’t remember some things that just happened, or sometimes even what word to say, but then, out of nowhere, I remember something from so long ago.’ A light went off in my head. The refugees, the hidden survivors’What if someone had a secret they tried their whole life to forget, and now they were desperate to remember, before it was too late? Thus the birth of ‘Leipzig.” It was the theme–the moral and ethical conclusions about the story–that captured the attention and commitment for both director Deborah La Vine and actors Salome Jens and Mimi Kennedy. ‘The story was very personal for Deborah, too,’ Graf says of her director, who joined the project after the play had been workshopped at Theatre West. Graf and La Vine presented two more readings, but the play wasn’t changed substantially from what Graf had conceived and written. To be sure, there were a few tweaks, here and there, such as Kennedy’s advice that Graf call God, ‘the father,’ in keeping with the customary Catholic nomenclature. As for the actors, Graf says, the challenges in ‘Leipzig’ are great. ‘This is a very difficult play,’ she concedes. ‘You have to convey what’s in reality, and what’s out. When you are conversing with imaginary people, like Jesus, or with dead people. You also have to be clear about when Eva is in Alzheimer’s and out, and what the actors can and can’t hear.’ For the first couple of weeks of rehearsals, which began in late August, Graf stayed away. ‘I wanted the actors and director to build a relationship and I also wanted to give the actors the freedom to explore the characters.’ In the end, Graf believes that ‘Leipzig’ may be her masterpiece, for a number of reasons. ‘I consider this a well-constructed piece that addresses a lot of relevant issues, but is in no way sentimental. We are all part of all this stuff,’ she says, referring to the whole of our identity. Helen is part of a Jewish Catholic family from Boston, and a woman trying to find peace with all these identities. ‘As Jesus says in the play, ‘Everyone has to find out where they fit on the continuum.” Graf and her husband Jerry Kaplan and their two children, Liza and Michael Kaplan, have integrated their Jewish identity into their lives and are members of Kehillat Israel. ‘Leipzig’ runs for eight weeks from October 20 through December 10 in the Marilyn Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Institute, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd. For tickets, call (323) 650-7777 or visit www.westcoastjewishtheatre.org.

A local cariodologist, recognized worldwide, speaks on heart disease

Palisadian Dr. Noel Bairey Merz is a world-renowned expert on heart disease in women and has appeared on numerous national television and radio shows to speak on the subject. She took time from her busy schedule as medical director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to get the “heart” message out to women. ‘Heart disease is the leading killer in women,’ Merz says. By heart disease she includes cardiovascular disease and stroke. ‘As a proportion, there are more strokes in women than in men.’ Every year since 1984, more women than men have died of heart disease. Heart disease also claims more women’s lives every year than breast cancer, although most women would say that breast cancer is a greater danger. In 1999, 41,000 American women died from breast cancer: cardiovascular disease killed 513,000. Both sexes suffer large artery blockage, which means the artery lining becomes hardened and swollen with plaque (calcium and fatty deposits and abnormal inflammatory cells), minimizing or stopping blood flow. An angiography is used to diagnosis this condition. Unfortunately, in addition to heart disease, women also suffer from large and small artery strokes in a ratio of 3 to 1 to men. In the artery lining in women, the plaque is smooth and even, unlike in their male counterparts, which means the condition isn’t diagnosed through an angiogram and, quite often, is misdiagnosed because the symptoms for heart attacks in women are different from those in men. ‘Symptoms in women can include persistent chest pain or pressure,’ Merz says. ‘Patients describe it as a constricting band or ‘elephant on my chest’. They have fatigue and shortness of breath. Often the women have already had an angiogram and were told that nothing is wrong.’ Why do more women have small artery disease? Women have smaller arteries than men and although size might be part of it, more probably, it’s sex-related. “If you take a male donor and transplant that heart into a female, the arteries will not change, they will stay large,” Merz says. “If you take a female heart and transplant it into a male, the arteries get larger.” Part of the problem with heart disease in women is that it has been studied extensively only in the past 10 years. Tests that have been developed over the years have been geared towards males and large-artery blockage. At Cedars-Sinai Women’s Heart Center, doctors look for heart disease that may have been overlooked by using invasive coronary reactivity testing. In addition, Merz is at the forefront of trying to validate whether cardiac Magnetic Resonancing (MR) can also pinpoint small artery disease, which would be preferable to any kind of invasive testing. If a woman is diagnosed with heart disease, the treatment is medical and can take four different routes, depending on the cause: 1) If it is endothelial (the single layer of cells that line the heart and blood vessels) dysfunction caused by smoking or borderline cholesterol, the risk factors are addressed. 2) If it is a genetic micro-vascular disfunction, the patient may be given beta blockers. 3) If it is a smooth-muscle disfunction of Princemetal’s angina, the patient may be given a calcium channel agent or a smooth-muscle relaxant. 4) If a patient has a combination of problems, she will be treated with a combination of medicine, diet and exercise. Merz is convinced that the heart disease found in women in their 40s, 50s and 60s coincides with their slowing metabolism as well as less exercise. When you exercise, nitric oxide is being stimulated, which is important for the heart. ‘I had one lady who was doing well, then went on a cruise, stopped exercising and started eating and when I saw her again, she had slid back,’ Merz recalls. “Generally, the ladies who exercise every day can minimize their medication,’ Merz says. Merz, who in addition to being a full-time doctor, is a mother of three girls. ‘After having children, I became the last priority,’ she says, so she understands when people tell her they don’t have time to exercise. After having her third child, who is now 14, Merz stopped eating dessert. She runs two to three days a week on average, but on the days she doesn’t run, she takes the stairs to her office on the ninth floor rather than the elevator. “Fewer than 20 percent of Americans get regular aerobic exercise, which contributes to heart disease,” Merz says. She is sympathetic and understands that people do work hard and don’t feel as if they have time to exercise, or they work in areas that are unsafe, which doesn’t allow them an environment to exercise. According to Merz, the healthy-heart formula is simple: 30 minutes of walking a day, which is about 10,000 steps. ‘If people want a cheap insurance card, that is it.’ Merz urges people to buy a pedometer and wear it. By doing so herself, she has discovered that she takes about 6,000 steps a day at the hospital, so by adding the stairs instead of the elevator or walking a little more, she reaches the prescribed amount. The doctor also enjoys a glass of wine with dinner. ‘Research is clear that people who do enjoy alcohol in moderation have a greater longevity than those who don’t drink or drink too much.’ Her husband, Rob Merz, is also a cardiologist. ‘After taking care of heart problems all day, we shifted our style of eating to a more Mediterranean model,’ she says. ‘Half of our plate is fruit and vegetables–or something that grows out of the ground. Meat is no longer the largest portion on the plate. We don’t eat steaks and burgers.’ The Merz’s daughters are all athletes. Alexa is a sophomore on the swim team at Stanford and still holds several records on the Palisades Y Swim Team (PALY) Record Board in Temescal Canyon. Carolyn, who attends Harvard-Westlake, is a fencer and runner, and Allison, also a freshman at Harvard-Westlake is a swimmer. Merz made an effort to make sure they have enough meat for protein, but also she made her children drink milk at every meal. ‘I get the mean-mother award,’ she says. ‘Fine.’ As a physician, Merz points to the idea of early medicine in this country, which was a combination of medication and regimen, and feels we need to get back to that idea. Treating disease should include diet and exercise as well as drugs. James Fixx, the famous author/runner who died of a heart attack at 52, had a family history of heart disease and was prescribed medicine for cholesterol, but didn’t take it; he thought that he could exercise away the problem. In this case, he needed the balance of medication. ‘There’s a belief right now that over-the-counter supplements, which includes ‘natural’ in the label, are better,’ she says. ‘Supplements are unregulated and unpurified, so you have no idea what you’re taking,’ Merz says. She calls many of the products that people take ‘talcum powder,’ which means that unscrupulous manufacturers could put talcum powder into products while labeling it something else and no one would be the wiser. She points out that statins, taken by people to keep their cholesterol down, are made from natural products and are monitored and followed by the FDA; patients know exactly what they’re taking, the exact dosage, and the expiration date. According to Merz, a product labeled “natural” red-rice yeast, sold over the counter, could have the same results, but there is no guarantee of potency or purity or that the pills even contain red-rice yeast. When making the decision to take supplements one should ask is: ‘Is it doing any harm I’m not aware of?’ Merz wants to educate all of America about the dangers of heart disease in women. She tells a story about a mom whose son was a friend of one of her daughters. “She always said she should come and see me,” Merz says, “because her family had a history of heart problems. One day, she was found dead on the sofa. She was in her 50s. She left a family. She won’t be at any more PTA meetings, she won’t be here to watch her child grow up. With heart disease, you often get no warning.’