The Health Benefits of Tai Chi

Tai Chi is an ancient form of Chinese martial art which is now more popular as a great form of exercise that is suited for both young and old.

Tai Chi is an ancient form of martial art that is being practiced for health reasons. As tai chi has already gained popularity all over the world, there are several modern tai chi techniques that have been developed and are being followed by tai chi practitioners worldwide. In spite of these new additions, the five major tai chi styles still remain: the yang style, Chen style, Wu/Hao style of Wu Yu-hsiang, Wu style of Wu Ch’uan-yu and his son Wu Chien ch’uan, and the Sun style. All five tai chi techniques have been named after the Chinese family from which it originated. While the Yang style is considered to be the most commonly practiced, the other major family styles are believed to also follow the same underlying theory but only differs when it comes to the training approach. At present, there are a lot of new styles, hybrid styles as well as offshoots from the main tai chi styles but these five remain to be the ones that are recognized by the international community as the orthodox styles.

Often described as “meditation in motion”, tai chi has a calming effect, brought about by its gentle movements which are also believed to connect the mind and body. While it was initially developed as a form of self-defense in China, tai chi is now being practiced regularly to help reduce stress aside from its other health benefits. In order, to do tai chi, one must perform a series of postures or movements in a slow and graceful manner. Also, make sure that when you do these exercises, each posture flows into the next without pausing. When it comes to this kind of exercise, the proper use of technique is much more important than strength. When it comes to the intensity of this exercise, it depends on the tai chi style that you are practicing as there are some Tai Chi styles that are more fast-paced compared to others.

While Tai Chi is a safe form of exercise, it is still best to consult your doctor first before getting into this program just to be safe. If you have any health problems with your spine, joints, and heart then the more important it is for you to get your doctor’s permission first.

More TAI CHI information on my next post……

Eat your way to longevity

Eating is one of the most essential occasions in everyone’s life. We depend the foods we eat as our only source of  energy and nutrition. We know so much about eating: we are born with the need to eat and grow up with rich traditions of eating. But we also know so little about eating, about how the foods we eat daily change our health. So the question now is what are the best foods to eat to health and longevity?

For your eating pleasure, here are some healthy foods on the hot list that will give you the biggest nutritional bang for your caloric buck, as well help decrease your risk of deadly illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Green Vegetables

Universally recognized by doctors and nutritionists, vegetables are the world’s most natural foods. They have minerals, vitamins and thousands of other plant chemicals known to provide great health benefits. Green leafy vegetables have varying amounts of folate, fiber, calcium, potassium, iron, and vitamins A, B, and C.  These vegetables are known to help prevent heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and many more.

Citrus Fruits

Vitamin C may lessen inflammatory conditions like osteoarthritis, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis. And also can protect the heart while boosting the immune system. Citrus fruits contain a fair amount of foliate and potassium. Foliate lowers homocysteine levels in the body and may reduce heart disease. The potassium in citrus fruits helps lower blood pressure as well.

Bananas

Nature’s wonder fruit, rich in potassium, vitamin B6, and folic acid. That’s why this is the choice snack food of many athletes. The high potassium content helps avoid cramps and gives ready energy with its easily digestible starch. Also perfect for patients with heart disease and high blood pressure. Some other conditions bananas help with are kidney  and circulatory problems

Carrots

Carrot’s deep orange color means that they are abundant in beta-carotene, an antioxidants like vitamins C and E. others believe carrots may delay aging, protecting the skin from ultraviolet light and preventing wrinkles. Some studies also have shown carrot’s contribution in reducing cancer risk, including lung cancer.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes contain lycopene which is considered the most powerful antioxidant among the carotenoids. It removes the evil free radicals from our body. A great source of vitamins C and E, and potassium, too.

Nuts

Nuts are nutritional power foods, packed in protein, minerals, and fats. Yes, they’re fatty but not worries, the fats found in nuts are the good fats monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. Instead of eating junk foods filled with unhealthy saturated fats, nuts can reduce your bad cholesterol while raising good cholesterol. Nuts also contain vitamin E, a potent antioxidant.

Tea (black and green tea)

Do you want to know why Asian people have fewer heart attacks as compared to Western people? Experts believe it’s because of their tea-drinking habit. Hot tea kills bacteria and cleanses the body. The secret is in the catechin, which performs like an antibiotic, artery protector, and anti-ulcer agent. Tea also may help you lose weight and prevents dental cavities. Studies have shown that green tea may prevent various cancers. Actually, green tea has the highest concentration of catechins, followed by oolong tea and the ordinary black tea.

Oats

Oatmeal a day or a couple of bowls of oat bran will cut down your cholesterol by around 10 percent. Oats include beta-glucan, a spongy, soluble fiber that sucks cholesterol in the intestines and throws them out of the body. Studies recommend that oats may lower blood pressure in hypertensive patients. Moreover, oats are one of the few grains that include the antioxidant to cotrienols, a vitamin E like substance. And with the dietary fiber in oats, it makes you feel full faster thus helps you control you weight.

Seven Dietary Traps

We are eating too much of almost everything, too much fat, too much sugar, and too much salt. We eat too many calories and we eat too often.

Such load has helped put the base for coronary artery disease, arthritis, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, obesity and several kinds of cancer. These diseases are accountable for three out of four deaths. They are related to lifestyle, especially to how we eat.

Here are seven of the most serious culprits:

Refined Foods. People used to think modification was good because it got rid of useless roughage. Now we’re learning how necessary fiber is in protecting from certain cancers, stabilizing blood sugar, controlling weight and preventing gastrointestinal problems such as hemorrhoids, constipation, gallstones and diverticulitis.

Sugar. Because they are devoid of fiber and nutrients, refined sugars are empty or naked calories. But because of their caloric density, they are well-suited to promote obesity.

Fat. Most people don’t realize that they are consuming 40 percent or more of their daily calories as fat. This is far more than the body can properly handle. As a result, the blood vessels are plugging up, causing coronary artery disease and strokes. A high fat diet also contributes to overweight, adult diabetes and certain cancers.

Salt. If you consume 15-20 grams of salt a day, you consume about 20 times more than actually needed. This contributes highly to heart failure, high blood pressure and kidney disease.

Snacks. Engineered taste feelings are taking the place of real food. Schools, daycare centers, even hospitals require snacks to be available. The coffee break remains standard in work places, as do after-school and TV snacks at home. Well-planned family meals are now the exemption. Snack attacks disrupt digestion and overburden the stomach. Who hasn’t experienced gas, bloating, indigestion, burning pain and other stomach problems?

Beverages. Some people seldom drink water. Instead they average several servings of soda pop, coffee, beer, and tea everyday. Because most of these drinks are loaded with calories, yet lack fiber, they can play havoc with blood sugar levels and sabotage weight control efforts. Alcohol, caffeine, phosphates and other chemicals found in beverages pose additional health risks.

Proteins. A diet heavy in meat and animal products provides more fat, protein, and cholesterol than the body can use. Some people eat two or three times more protein than is recommended. Scientists now recognize that a diet containing less protein, and much less fat and cholesterol, is essential for improved health and longevity.

People need to comprehend that eating a range of whole plant foods will furnish all the fat, protein, fiber and nutrients the body needs. It is also ecologically sensitive, and will cut the food budget in half.

The best news is that this kind of dietary lifestyle can delay and avoid the onset of most degenerative diseases and even help heal them. Eating full-fiber plants foods allows people to eat bigger quantities of food without having to worry about weight gain and will promote optimum health and energy for a lifetime.

Fat makes fat people

Do you have problem with your weight? At a time millions of people go hungry from childhood to old age; people who number about one-third of the world’s population eat three-quarters of the world’s food.

The three classes of foods that provide energy are proteins, carbohydrates and fats. A gram of protein or of carbohydrate yields 16.7 kilojoules of food fuel. In other words, the fat you add to your food is high-octane fuel and consequently runs up the kilojoules fast.

Fat can be either liquid or solid. The fats that are liquid at room temperature we usually call oils. All fats are made up of three fatty acids joined to one molecule of glycerin. The reason some fats as margarine, lard, or butter are solid at room temperature and oils are liquid is because of the kind of fatty acid they contain. Fats with a large proportion of saturated, or stiff fatty acids, are firm. But regardless of the kind of fat or food energy you consume, the surplus is converted to body far made up largely of saturated, or solid, fatty acids. This is as at should be, otherwise in warm weather, your fat would turn liquid and you would just slush around like a bag of oil.  So would all land animals. For this reason animal fats are hard. So, then of you eat freely of foods containing animal fats, your fat intake will be largely of the saturated type, plus considerable cholesterol which is present in all animal fats.

But oils can be made hard by hydrogenation a process which causes the unsaturated fatty acids of the oils take on more hydrogen and so become saturated, or hard, as is done in the manufacture of shortenings and margarine. Hard fats of any kind tend to raise blood cholesterol, but not to the same degree. Some newer type margarine is only lightly hydrogenated and has little effect on the cholesterol level. High levels of cholesterol in the blood are associated with a high increase in the incidence of coronary artery disease and stroke.

You may think you don’t use much fat. You may not, but again, you may be using more than you think. Fats are divided into visible and invisible kinds, and you may be consuming more fat hidden in foods than you realize. Visible fat is fat or oil such as you use on your table or in the preparation of food. When you make a sandwich or salad, the mayonnaise, dressing, butter or margarine you add is visible fat.  So is the fat or oil the baker adds to the flour to make bread, pie crust or cake.

Invisible fat on the other hand is fat inherent in the food. Nearly all foods contain some invisible fat. The germ of grains, certain oily seeds, nuts and olives contain from moderate to large amounts, mainly in a highly unsaturated form. Animal foods, as meat, milk and eggs, are also high in invisible fats, largely of the hard or saturated kind. By eating freely of foods high in fat, visible or invisible, we greatly increase our energy intake.

If you are having a problem with excess weight, the simplest and easiest way to control it is to cut down on the concentrated foods. There are the fats, the sugars, and the foods containing generous quantities of sugar and fat, mainly the rich desserts. If eaten at all, these should be used only sparingly by anyone to cut down weight.

The problems of overweight are serious. For every 2.5 kilograms of weight, your body must provide an additional 4.8 kilometers of blood vessels to circulate blood through this fatty tissue. If you are nine kilograms overweight your heart must push blood through 19 extra kilometers of blood vessels, day and night. This increased work load is the reason overweight is frequently associated with high blood pressure. It is also associated with high blood cholesterol and with an increased liability to stroke, coronary heart disease and diabetes.

To be overweight is more than an inconvenience. Every excess of 500 grams shortens life expectancy by one percent. This means that if you are 30 years of age and would normally live another 40 years or to the age of 70; if you are 14 kilograms overweight you are risking death 12 years earlier, or at the age of 58. If you are 22 kilograms over weight at the age 30, you are risking 20 years of your life, or death at the age of 50. So you can readily see that overweight is a real life shortener.

While coronary heart disease and stroke is the greatest killer in technologically developed countries, cancer follows close behind as second in line. The occurrence of every type of cancer is more frequent in those who suffer from overweight than in those who do not.

The Super Diet

Is vegetarianism really viable or is it a fad?

More and more people are moving toward a vegetarian diet. Many national and international groups – heart associations, diabetic associations, cancer groups – are recommending that we eat more whole grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables.

They also suggest that we should cut down on meals, particularly red meals. Some are recommending poultry and fish as alternatives to red meat. Fish have wholly polyunsaturated fat whereas red meats have highly toward more vegetarianism.

Is it possible to get the necessary nutrients and the right balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat as a vegetarian?

For carbohydrates, a vegetarian diet is the best, especially for fiber – the neglected nutrient, as some call it. You can’t get fiber in any animal products. As for fat, any animal products generally have too much, and of the wrong type. The vegetarian diet has less fat and of a better kind.

Vitamins and mineral generally are considerably more abundant in fruits, whole grains and vegetables than in meats. And if you’re eating grains and legumes, the protein quality is as good as from animal sources. In fact, it’s difficult not to get sufficient protein in the diet unless you’re on a weight reducing program.

Health experts used to say a vegetarian child couldn’t get adequate protein. Has there been a shift in understanding?

At the turn of the century the daily protein requirement was believed to be about 120 grams. The recommendation now is about 60 grams for women and 70 grams for men. But you actually can get by with as little as 25 or 30 grams of high-quality protein.

I’ve heard about several positive aspects of vegetarianism. Are there any major cautions about a vegetarian diet?

If you suddenly start eating a lot of beans, for example, you may develop gas and cramping. Also, studies show that meat-eaters, when put onto a high-fiber vegetarian diet for two or three weeks, may develop a temporary imbalance of several minerals. However, long-term vegetarians don’t show such an imbalance. This implies that it takes some months for the body to adjust to a high-fiber vegetarian diet.

Some people say that vegetarians tend to eat more sugar. Have you found that to be so?

We seem to have an appetite for sweet things. But you can do two things.

First, you can train your palate. You can invoke what is called “cerebral override.” Actually, you can easily get by with only one half or one third the amount of sugar called for in recipes. Once you’re used to less sugar, the original recipe will be nauseating.

Second, there are sweet foods that are healthful. At our cooking schools we occasionally use concentrated apple juice, pineapple juice, dates and various dried fruit. They’re sweet, but used sensibly there’s no problem. It’s only when we eat such foods in large quantities or between meals that we run into problems.

Walk It Off

How can I lose weight?

Eat less, exercise more.

But I’ve heard that if you eat less, your body slows down to compensate.

That’s true – to a point. The body is a motor that runs all the time. The rate at which the body motor stills is called its Basal Metabolic Rate. The faster the motor runs, the more fuel is used.

In the body, when fuel supplies are cut, an inner mechanism turns down the idling under conditions of starvation, but it defeats the person trying to lose weight.

Can this reaction be prevented?

Activity and exercise speed up the body’s metabolic rate. Not only are more calories burned during the exercise, but the effect continues for several hours. That’s why most people feel more active when their exercise program promotes weight loss by pepping up the metabolism – burning calories faster.

But I’ve heard that you have to run 10 miles to work off an ice-cream sundae.

There are other choices. You can burn the calories by sleeping for 15 hours, or by watching TV for 12 hours.

The problem, of course, is the there aren’t enough hours in the day to sleep away two ice-cream sundaes. That’s why exercise is so important – otherwise you’re not burning calories, you’re storing them away.

How many calories do I need?

Multiplying your current weight by 10 approximates the daily calories you would need to maintain the status quo if you are bedfast – this is your BMR. Your activity calories are on top of this: most people need an additional 30 percent of the BMR for this. Added together, this represents the number of calories you must eat every day to maintain your weight.

If you’re fairly sedentary and weigh 150 pounds, for example, your BMR needs would be, 1,500 calories, and your activity calories would be 450, for a total of 1,950 calories.

To lose weight, you need to reduce this number of calories or increase the number of calories used. When you develop a negative energy balance, you force your body to burn its reserve fuel, that is, fat.

Doesn’t muscle tissue turn into fat as a person gets older?

Muscle tissue does not turn to fat. It is physiologically impossible for this to happen.

When people become less active, however, their muscles shrink. Eating habits often are not adjusted to this lessened activity, so as excess calories accumulate, the body stores the fat in numerous places, including the spaces around the muscle fibers.

An important point to understand is that the muscles burn fat. When more muscle tissue is present, fat will burn faster and more efficiently. On the other hand, lack of exercise and overly rigorous dieting will cause the body to lose muscle. If this situation persists for a long time, it may become almost impossible to lose further weight.

Is 30 minutes of exercise three times a week enough?

Once a person has reached normal weight and a good level of fitness, that is may be sufficient. But people who are unfit and people who need to lose weight must aim higher – do an hour a day.

What is the best exercise?

The safest and best exercise is walking, with swimming a close second. People with high levels of fitness may select more tough exercises.

Start slowly with what you can do. How fast you go isn’t the most important thing; it is the total distance covered and the duration of the activity. Some individual must start with only 5 minutes at a time several times a day.

If your want to get thin, get in shape. Put your best food forward, begin a walk your way out of obesity, and keep going for a lifetime.

How to Help Meat Lovers Go Meatless

With millions of people adopting or considering a vegetarian lifestyle, lots of dinner tables have become scrimmage lines. Often it’s the men of the house who aren’t persuaded that Soybean Surprise and Super Gluten Patties are worth the long-term benefits.

Maybe you have a meat-and-potato wife or a child who believes ketchup is a vegetable and Jell-O is a fruit. It’s tempting to give up by sending him to McDonalds while you stay home with your organic veggie burger. But give him a chance. With patience on both sides you can restore again.

Start by asking about his objections. And pay attention to his answers. Here are some ways you can deal with them:

“I don’t like weird stuff.” If your man wasn’t exploratory before, he’s not likely to transform now. The secret is to make on the familiar. If you have him list his much loved foods, you’ll find that many can be switched to vegetarian versions. Rely on those favorites at first. A vegetarian pizza is much less awful to a meat eater than a hot dog made of soy protein. Former meat lovers say some of their favorite vegetarian foods are vegetarian chili, tacos, pasta salads, spaghetti, vegetable stew or potpie, lentils, vegetable stir-fry, potatoes, baked beans, of all kinds, lasagna, and sub sandwiches.

“A man needs his protein.” Most of us grew up hearing that meat was one of the four fundamental food groups. Casually explain to him the latest carbohydrate-based food pyramid if he’s not familiar with it. It’s almost impossible not to get adequate protein if you’re eating enough food to live. If he’s athletic, encourage him that carbohydrates are his main power resource and might even improve his performance.

“Vegetarian food doesn’t fill me up.” Understand that he may feel hungry at first. You have to eat a better amount of plant foods to get the same number of calories found in meat. Also, meat digests more gradually, so it seems to stick with you longer. Part of shifting to vegetarianism is getting used to the lighter feeling. In the meantime, be understanding and help him find foods with satiety significance, such as potatoes and nuts.

“Vegetarian food is tasteless.” One bad occurrence with bland, undercooked soybeans can send a man run away for his favorite steak restaurant. But healthy food isn’t supposed to be boring. Take a class, get some cookbooks, or ask a friend to show you how to improve flavors with lemon, tomato, garlic, onion, and fresh or dried herbs.

“Nothing’s wrong with the way I eat.” Unless your man already endures from health dilemmas, you’re not going to influence him that flame-broiled steaks are killing him. Kindly indicate the long-term benefits of a meatless diet, but remember that promises of lower cholesterol and less cancer risk do not always motivate mean as readily as women. Young men especially want to see more immediate benefits. A vegetarian diet can diet can slim his waist, sharpen his mind, boost his energy, and even lower the food bill.

Eat More, Weigh Less

The average person is now five pounds heavier. That’s despite 20 years of increasingly sophisticated.

That sounds pretty grim. Is there a brighter side?

Actually, there’s a Mr. or Ms. Goodweight inside each one of us – it may just be stuck behind layers of discouragement bulges of overindulgence, and mounds of misconceptions. We need to locate that special person inside and begin restoring the health, energy, and self-confidence that’s been buried far too long.

How do you do that?

By finding a lifestyle that maintains health, increases energy, lowers the risk of diseases, reduces food bills, and allows people to eat as much as they want and still lose weight without feeling hungry.

Surely that’s an impossible dream

Not really. Obesity occurs when calories eaten exceed the calories used by the body for physical activity and maintenance of its functions. These leftover calories are stored as fat. By the time 3,500 extra calories have accumulated, one pound of fat will have been deposited.

Adding an extra pat of butter (100 calories) to the daily diet will total up to 10 extra pounds of body fat in one year/ on the other hand, omitting dessert for seven days will remove one pound of body fat.

The secret of success lies in finding a way to eat fewer calories instead of eating less food.

That sounds like a contradiction

Today’s world is full of contradictions. Popular magazines and TV screens brim with beautiful, slender people – and with full-color ads of rich, fattening foods. Supermarkets offer slickly packaged, calorie-dense products, along with magazines touting the latest quickie diet. Fastfood restaurants tempt from nearly service – but nutrition is what they take out.

Modern food technology, you see, has turned inexpensive low-calorie, high-volume caloric bombs. It’s now possible to eat a whole meal/s worth of calories with only a few bites hungry and dissatisfied and overeat.

How does it happen? Processing strips seven pounds of sugar beets of their bulk, fiber, and nutrients, producing one pound of pure sugar. Sugar and other refined sweeteners now account for about 20 percent of daily calories.

Grains, robbed of fiber and nutrients, can be turned into alcohol accounting for another nine percent of empty calories many adults consume every day. Add it up, almost 50 percent of the modern diet consists of processed and concentrated calories devoid of vital nutrients and valuable fiber a surefire formula for overweight.

How do you go about losing weight?

If you love food but want to lose weight, then…. Eat more..

Fresh and steamed vegetables but go easy on sauces and salad dressings.

Whole grains, cooked cereals, brown rice, whole-grain breads, pasta.

Tubers and other vegetables – potatoes, yams, squash. And all kinds of beans, lentils, and peas.

Fresh, whole fruits.

These foods as grown are filling, nutrients, inexpensive and low in calories. Eat less…

Refined, processed and concentrated foods. They are high in calories and price and low in nutrients and fiber.

Nuts, meats and rich dairy products. While these foods are nutritious they have little fiber and bulk and are very high in fat and calories. Meats and cheeses, for instance, are 60-80 percent fat.

What else can you do?

Drink plenty of water – six to eight glasses a day. Try herb teas, mineral water or just plain water. Keep the sodas for special occasions.

Walk briskly every day. Keep at it until you can walk 30 to 60 minutes without fatigue or shortness of breath.

Beware of weak moments:

If one cookie leads to a dozen, don’t ear the first one.

If you feel bored, frustrated, or lonely, go for a walk, drink a glass of water, read a book, call a supportive friend. Or, you can feast on natural foods like semi-frozen grapes, juicy melons, or crunchy carrot sticks.

Don’t buy problem foods. If they’re not around you won’t be tempted.

Tie-in to spiritual resources. God doesn’t make nobodies. He created you for health and prosperity.

It’s time to put an end to those unbalanced semi-starvation diets that leave you frustrated, dissatisfied, and craving more to eat. Begin a lifestyle that will recondition your habits toward a lifetime of better health. By avoiding popular trends and choosing the right kinds of foods you can eat more and still lose one to two pounds a week.

D.A.S.H (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) DIET

A new eating guide called the DASH diet may help you prevent or lower high blood pressure. And the diet may have other health benefits.

Common Problem

Untreated, hypertension can damage arteries and increase risk for stroke and heart problems. Treatment advice has typically consisted of lifestyle changes – eating healthfully, reducing sodium, maintaining a healthy weight, and not smoking, exercising, and limiting alcohol – perhaps combined with medication. Recently, the role of diet has drawn more attention.

Diet Comparison

The DASH diet evolved from the study “Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.” For eight weeks, participants followed on three diets – a diet that matched the average American diet, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and a combination diet that was reduced in saturated fat and emphasized fruits, vegetables and low fat dairy products. Sodium consumption in all three was about 3,000 milligrams a day.

The result: The fruit ands vegetable and combination diets both lowered blood pressure, but the combination diet was most effective.

In that group, the decrease was the greatest for those with high blood pressure – an average drop of 11.4 points in systolic pressure. That’s about the same effect as some medications.

Researchers aren’t sure why the combination diet fared better. However, they believe it’s due to the mixture of nutrients provided, rather than any single ingredients.

Widespread Benefits

If your: Blood pressure is regular, the DASH diet may help you avoid blood pressure problems. If your blood pressure is only slightly elevated, the diet may actually eliminate your need for medication. For more severe high blood pressure, it may allow you to reduce your medication. However, don’t stop or alter your medication without first consulting your doctor.

The DASH diet can’t do it alone, though. It’s important that you take other steps to control or prevent hypertension, including exercising, losing excess weight, not smoking and limiting alcohol.

More than a Hypertension Diet

The DASH diet may improve your health in other ways, too. Fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk for some cancers. The calcium in dairy products can lower risk for osteoporosis. And a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol can reduce cardiovascular risk.

An additional plus: The diet is made up of regular foods available at your grocery store.

Healthwise: Elixir of Life

Without it man cannot live. Whether a body is human, elephant, of fish, it requires a large amount of water to stay alive. The body of an average-sized man contains some 40 liters of water – making up about 70 percent of his body weight. A loss of 20 percent or even less of this vital substance can cause death.

In the human body water acts as a lubricant, helps protect tissues from injury, and gives flexibility to muscles, tendons, cartilage, and bones.

Water also helps to digest your food, keep you body cool, and prevent your skin from drying out and cracking. In fact, every activity in the body depends on an adequate supply of water. Those tissues which carry out life’s most vital functions contain the most. Thus while the body as a whole is about two-thirds water, the gray matter of the brain is 85 percent. Even dry bones contain 20 to 24 percent water.

If you are an average person, you love water and you are clean – at least on the outside. Bath, tubs, showers, dishwashers, and washing machines send a river down the drain every day.

But what about your insides? Do you pour in enough water every day to keep it clean too? Or is your body’s machinery working overtime in order to wash your blood with just a few swallows a day?

You mean my blood gets dirty? Yes, it does. And it must be constantly cleaned in order for you to remain healthy. The blood carries foodstuffs and other necessary substances to every tissue and picks up from every cell its waste products, toxic materials, and whatever else the cell must get rid of to function properly. Any accumulation of undesirable substances can cause fatigue, sickness, and even death. These must be removed, and that takes water – enough to flush every cell with a rapidly circulating bath.

How much water does your body need each day? This depends on your activity. If you do nothing to increase sweating, etc., you would need about six glasses just to replace that which is normally lost as the body machinery functions. Strenuous activities and hot, dry days will greatly increase this requirement. Thirst alone cannot be depended upon to compel you to drink enough, either. You must educate yourself to drink enough, whether you feel like it or not.

It is likely that much of the fatigue and the tired blood feeling many people get results from not drinking enough water.

Water… vital to life. Drink it freely and live abundantly.