Your health: Burn calories by hanging decos

Body basics

You can work up a sweat hanging up Christmas decorations and burn nearly 300 calories for every 30 minutes you spend climbing up and down a ladder. And hoisting all those lights and decorations will help tone your arms and back.

Long love affair

Our passion for chocolate isn't a recent one, scientists tracing the history of chocolate have found. Chemists in the laboratories at Hershey Co. have found evidence of cacao beverages as far back as 1,500 B.C., according to Archaeology magazine. But it wasn't something you ate. It was actually a dark, bitter drink. To help put things into perspective, 1525 B.C. is believed to be the year Moses was born.

Not to sneeze at

Hyatt Regency O'Hare, 9300 Bryn Mawr Ave. in Rosemont, is making it easier for severe allergy sufferers to breathe better this holiday season with their new Respire by Hyatt-Hypo-Allergenic rooms, which are 98 percent allergen free and are particularly good for guests with asthma, allergies and other respiratory sensitivities. Each Respire room has mattresses and pillows encased in a protective hypoallergenic covering, and the air in the room is continuously circulated through a medical-grade purifier. For more information, visit respire.hyatt.com.

High price of fraud

Medicare fraud costs the system $60 billion a year, according to a new AARP Bulletin article. But it's not just crooked physicians submitting phony claims anymore: Medicare fraud is a magnet “for violent felons and mobsters, who consider cheating the system safer, easier and more lucrative than drug dealing.” Rather than diving into the underworld of Medicare fraud, the article gives a big-picture view of the government's efforts to crack down on scammers. Great detail: In a Brooklyn medical clinic that allegedly ran a $72 million scam, a Soviet-style poster warned would-be snitches, “Don't gossip! These days, the walls have ears.”