om Wong has given up his traditional Chinese superstitious beliefs for good old American ones. And he could live longer as a result.

Superstitions of any kind are known to raise stress and anxiety levels, but for Chinese and Japanese Americans, the fear of the number four can be a real killer.

On the fourth of each month - and today is March 4 - cardiac deaths for Chinese and Japanese Americans spike 7 percent compared to other days, according to a massive new study by a team of scientists at the University of California-La Jolla.

Why? Because in the Japanese and Chinese languages, four sounds just like the word for death, shi, and it's been avoided for untold ages as an "unlucky number," says David Phillips, the lead author of the study, which analyzed millions of death records for Japanese, Chinese and white Americans.

It's considered so unlucky in China and Japan that many hospitals don't list a fourth floor, the Chinese air force avoids assigning the number four to its planes, and the "Simpsons" cartoon show was initially a flop in both countries - because Homer and Bart and the other characters only have four fingers.

The researchers found no similar anomoly among white Americans, even on the dreaded Friday the 13ths. In England, though, studies have shown that traffic accidents increase on Friday the 13ths.

"Friday the 13th doesn't make a connection with death because there is no linguistic association with death," Phillips said.

Still, he said, superstitions affect all people, regardless of educational level or ethnicity. They're hard-wired in our brains.

"The Danish Nobel Prize winning physicist, Niels Bohr, had a horseshoe over his lab door," Phillips said. "Somebody said, 'Surely you don't believe this superstition brings you good luck?' He said, 'I don't believe in it, but I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it."'

Phillips and his colleagues dubbed their finding the "Hound of the Baskervilles effect," and it was published under that title in the respected British Medical Journal. In the book, by writer and doctor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Baskerville dies of a heart attack induced by psychological stress.

"The Baskerville effect exists both in fact and in fiction and suggests that Conan Doyle was not only a great writer but a remarkably intiutive physician as well," Phillips said.

Maury Brook, a friend of Wong's, has his own set of stress-inducing superstitions. One of his hobbies is gambling. And Brook, a 52-year-old commercial real estate salesman in Marietta, Ga., likes the number four but is spooked by certain numbers.

"When I look at my cards and I see an eight, I feel like it's going to be a bad hand," Brook said. "This is based on experience, not superstition. I am superstitious in different ways."

OK, what other ways? "I use the number four stall in the bathroom," said Brook. "It works for me. If I'm playing roulette, I put down on the number four. I always say Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. I prefer female dealers. I'm more lucky with them than males."

Such behaviors aren't good for us because they've been shown to raise stress levels, Phillips said. Still, most of us have numbers we'd rather not come up, and many are faith-based.

Abdullah an-Na'im, an Emory University law professor and expert on the Islamic religion, says it wouldn't bother him if Wednesdays vanished from the calendar.

"Growing up in Sudan, the day Wednesday was not supposed to be a good day for starting new things," he said. "It was seen as a bad day. Some people don't want to do weddings on Wednesday. Or you wouldn't even cut your hair on Wednesday. It's a bad omen. Whatever you're doing on a Wednesday, it's likely to go wrong. I don't believe it, but it's a vague feeling I can't articulate. No matter how educated people are, there is that deep feeling of apprehension about Wednesdays, and good feelings about the number seven."

Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Congregation Etz Chaim in metro Atlanta said that a common but ancient superstition holds that even numbers "are not only unlucky, but actually dangerous. Most Jews wouldn't know this. The only number they'd rather not see would probably be their synagogue bill."

With Christians, "there is no teaching about numbers being bad luck," said the Rev. Eric Hill of Transfiguration Catholic Church in Marietta. "Obviously, some people attribute 666 to the devil. We don't believe in that being a bad number. But there are some numbers that are significant. Seven is supposed to be the perfect number. In scripture, there are a lot of references to that. They say Jesus entered the Temple when he was seven. The number 12 is significant as far as 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel. But there are no specific numbers that are seen as bad luck or as good luck."

One reason lots of people don't like Friday the 13th is that it follows the 12th. "Twelve connotes completeness, and when you pass something that is complete, imbalance results," says Michael Dean Murphy, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama.

Thirteen has long been regarded as unlucky among Christians, he says, probably in part because after Jesus sat down with his 12 disciples, "the trouble begins," he says. That's why in much of the Western world, 13 guests at a dinner party is considered as bad. So bad that Napoleon, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt wouldn't allow 13 people to take part in a meal, Murphy says.

"Indeed, at least up into the 20th century, the French had the custom of a professional 14th guest, the 'quatrozieme,' who could be called on short notice to prevent having 13 diners. FDR allegedly used his personal secretary for that purpose."

Scientists have demonstrated repeatedly that positive attitudes and religion promote health by reducing stress, Phillips says. But ingrained superstitions can clearly be harmful. The ill effect of the number four among Chinese and Japanese Americans is most pronounced among the elderly, he says, and Wong agreed.

"My parents didn't like the number, it was bad luck," says Wong, 50. "That's the old days. It doesn't bother me. But there are some people who don't want to see the number four on the table."

But at his restaurant, they do. They don't, however, see the number 13. His long menu lists entre choices from one to 32, but there's no 13.

"We skip that," he laughed. "We don't want to push luck."

Copyright 2002 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.