Members of Junior Chamber International (JCI), Port Harcourt metropolitian, during a free medical outreach in Bundu-Ama, Port Harcourt, recently.

The Exercise you obtain:
Do you want to live longer?
Dr Roy .J. Shepherd, an expert on exercise and aging at the University of Toronto, in the Sixth Edition of the Natural Remedies Encyclopedia explains it: “you’d have to go a long way to find something as good as exercise as a fountain of youth, and you don’t have to run marathon to reap the benefits. Little more than rapid walking for 30 minutes at a time three to four times a week can provide ten years of rejuvenation.”
Exercise is another important law of healthy living but unfortunately, we are too carried away by our works once comfort of our offices and homes that we neglect it. Here is a brief summary of some of the things that regular exercise can begin to do for you right away:
Exercise will improve the tone of your muscles and blood vessels, charging them from weak and flabby tissue to strong and firm tissue, often reducing blood pressure in the process.
It will increase the efficiency of your heart, gradually making it to grow stronger and pump more blood with each stroke, thus reducing the number of strokes needed to supply your body with life-giving blood.
It will improve your digestion by quickening the circulation and helping to lift the blood back to the heart from the digestive organs and thus normalizing your bowel action.
It will increase the efficiency of your livings, conditioning them to process more air with less effort.
Exercise increases your maximum oxygen consumption by increasing the amount available and the efficiency of its delivery to the blood cells.
It will improve the overall condition of your body, especially your most vital parts: the lungs, heart, blood vessels and endocrine system. This will impart added protection against sickness.
It can change your whole outlook on life, enabling you to relax, work more efficiently and handle stress better. When not overdone, it imparts a  cheerful quality to the mind.
It will enable you to sleep better at night and think better during the day. Exercise strengthens the will and helps to get more work done with less fatigue.
Exercise further slows down the aging process-by slowing down the natural physical deterioration that old age normally brings. It gives a new zest for life  at a time when you most need it and there is evidence that it can reduce the likelihood of cancer.
This law of healthy living provides a powerful increase of oxygen to the body. Ordinarily, a man in hales about 500 cubic inches of air every minute. By walking about four miles per hour, he draws in about 2,500 cubic inches per minute, or five times more than that  absorbed when sitting down. But if you are over 50, exercise carefully. Avoid jumping and pounding activities. The best objective is light exercise such as walking for 30 minutes, three to five times weekly.
One of the great faults of our current civilization is that our young adults about the age of 25 become ‘too busy’ to exercise. Yet, for the next two decades of their lives, they probably need it even more than when they were children.
A lack of physical activity leads to abnormal or accelerated clotting of the blood in coronary  cerebral and other arteries as well as in the veins. Thus, it is now felt that regular on-going activity all year long may be important in preventing or reducing strokes and coronary heart attacks.
For his busy age, walking is one of the simplest and best exercise. Go out there into the open an and walk. Leave all your cares behind you briskly set off with your arms swinging. Take deep breaths of air as you go and afterward, experience the new life.
.The water that cleanses: Water is one of the most valuable helper’s you have in the daily task of keeping n health or in receiving health when it is lost. How very important it is that you drink enough water each day. Yon kidneys alone filter about 50 gallons of fluid each day. In a 24-hour period, more than eight quarts of digestive juices flow into the digestive tract. Much of this water is recycled over and over again by the kidneys. But about two to four quarts of water a day are lost through the urine, lungs  or perspiration. Thus, if you do not keep drinking water, your kidneys cannot perform their functions well and kidney disease results.
It has been found that water intake can increase physical endurance and ability to work by as much as 80 percent. When you do not drink water, your blood thickens and flows with greater difficulty. This can cause trouble not only in body tissues and organs but also to your heart that must pump that sludged blood.
So many people eat far too much of salt, sugar and protein, yet each of these substances requires additional water to process. Lack of water not only affects health, it affects work production as well. It is therefore generally recommended that we drink eight glasses of water a day. But it is best if you do not drink it with your meals but between them. According to experts the very best times for water drinking is first thing upon arising n the morning and then 30 minutes or so before each meal.
The drinking water should be pure but unfortunately this is becoming too difficult to obtain. One solution to this is to purchase a reliable water distiller for your home. This will clean the water. Distilled water will rather than hurt, help you especially when eating a good diet so that you are obtaining you proper amounts of calcium and other minerals from your food. In contrast, regular water often contains an excess of inorganic sodium, chlorine, Sulfur, fluorine, iron, chromium, lead and other undesirable elements and in far greater  amounts than the body could possibly use. We can be thankful that small, inexpensive home distillers are now easily available.
If you have the choice, when drinking water from pipes, it is better to drink hard water and soft water. The hard water, which mainly has calcium and magnesium in it, will lower the chances of acquiring cardiovascular and kidney diseases.
When we come to the individual need for water, it is readily realized that water is certainly our most precious mineral. It is the most essential of all minerals for our bodies. An animal can lose all its fats, about half its protein but if it loses as much as one-tenth of its water, it will die.
Your body is 80 percent water. The countless millions of cells inside of you are constantly being bathed in water. And this is not merely a soaking process, but a rewashing activity done by your blood stream. Water in the blood brings nutrition and oxygen to your tissues and caines off wastes. If injury occurs, coagulants come out of the fluid and stop the bleeding, while white blood cells emerge from the blood stream and begin to attack the poisonous substances.
Delicate chemical balances are maintained by the flowing blood as hormones, digestive substances and many other vital substance are transported through the body fluids to their appointed places. It is no wonder than that this most precious commodity should be needed by mankind not only inside but outside as well.
.The Power Of Abstemiousness: To be abstemious ‘is to be moderate or separating in the use of certain things including an excess of even good food. Here, we are speaking of self-control. In order to succeed physically, mentally and morally in life, we must have temperance in regard to things good and abstinence in regard to things harmful. And in order to preserve good healths, temperance in all things-labour, eating and drinking is necessary.
Even when eating the most careful diet, you can get too much of a good thing. Too much even of the best food is harmful. Too much sunshine can result in severe sunburn, too much exercise can cause excessive exhaustion and so, this law, one of the most important of the laws of health should not, be downplayed.
The famous American writer, William Cullen Bryant, lived to a very old age. When asked the reason for his excellent health in such an advanced age, he replied, “ it is all summed up in one word: moderation.” If we would be temperate in all things, self-control must be exercised in our daily diet, work habits, recreation, conversation, travels, sleep and study. Throughout life, we must ever be on guard lest we fall into intemperance.
Have certain times to work and certain times not to, do the same with your mind. Turn it off at times and just relax. Moreso, be cheerful. Permit nothing to keep you continually depressed or anxious. Note that people that are cheerful and relaxed always are healthier and have longer, happier lives than they otherwise would-without exception.

Lady Godknows Ogbulu