Exercise

Exercise helps keep the body healthy and fit. Vigorous exercise strengthens muscles and improves the function of the circulatory and respiratory systems. Physical fitness benefits both physical and mental health. It enables the body to withstand stresses that otherwise could cause physical and emotional problems.

To achieve fitness, a person should start an exercise program slowly and build it up gradually to a level that maintains a healthy heart and strong muscles. Daily exercise provides the greatest benefits, and so it is important to choose exercises that can be performed every day. Such popular activi­ties as bicycling, jogging, and swimming, and even taking long, brisk walks, furnish the vigorous exercise necessary for fitness.

Participating in golf, tennis, or some other sport only once or twice a week cannot develop and maintain fitness. Rest and sleep help overcome fatigue and restore energy to the body. Everyone needs rest and sleep, but the amount required differs for each individual. Most Adults sleep from 7 to 8 hours a night, though some need less sleep and others need more. Young children may need more sleep at night plus a daytime nap.

Rest and relaxation are as important as sleep. After strenuous work or exercise, a person may need a period of total rest. At other times, only relaxation or a change of pace is necessary. Any activity that differs from the normal routine of work or study can be relaxing. Pleasurable and relaxing activities help the body shed tension and remain robust. If rest and relaxation do not relieve fatigue and tension, the individual may have a physical or emotional problem.

Medical and dental care.

Regular checkups by a doctor and dentist play an important role in safeguarding health. Doctors recommend that people have medical care at the first sign of any illness. Early care can result in quicker cure.

Health Insurance, National, is a government program that finance extensive health services for the majority of the people in a country. This type of program is sometimes called socialized medicine. Every industrial nation except the United States has some form of national health insurance, also called NHI. In the United States, a private health insurance system is operated. The first NHI plan was established in Germany in l883. The British National Health Service is a system of state-funded medical care that covers virtually all the people of Britain. It also covers overseas visitors who become ill while in Britain. Employed people in Britain pay weekly health insurance contributions to help finance the service. But most of the funds for the service come from taxes.

II. Questions for discussion:

1. What are the main ways to improve or save one's health?

2. Why do people go dieting?

3. Why do the developed countries encourage their people to live healthy lives?

III. Advise the patient as if you were a doctor. Dramatize your dialogue in pairs.

Supplementary reading good days, bad days

I. Study the vocabulary notes:

jet lag – усталость после длительного перелета

to be accident-prone – быть невезучим

policyholder – обладатель страхового полиса

to cut down - сократить

II. Read the text consulting the dictionary. Make your topical vocabulary and learn it. Prepare for a discussion.

At the beginning of this century medical scientists made a surprising discovery that we are built not just of flesh and blood but also of time. They were able to demonstrate that we all have an internal body clock, which regulates the rise and fall of our body energies, making us different from one day to the next. These forces became known as biorhythms; they create the "highs" and "lows" in our everyday life.

The idea of an internal "body clock" should not be too surprising, since the lives of most living things are dominated by the 24-hour night-and-day cycle. The most obvious feature of this cycle is the way we feel tired and fall asleep at night and become awake during the day. If the 24-hour rhythm is interrupted, most people experience unpleasant side effects. For example, international aeroplane travellers often experience "jet lag" when travelling across time zones. People who are not used to shift work can find that lack of sleep affects their work performance.

As well as the daily rhythm of sleeping and waking, we also have other rhythms which last longer than one day and which influence wide areas of our lives. Most of us would agree that we feel good on some days and not so good on others. There are times when we appear to be accident-prone. Isn't it also strange how ideas seem to flow on some days but at other times are apparently non-existent? Musicians, painters and writers often talk about such periods.

Scientists have identified the following three biorhythmic cycles: physical, emotional and intellectual. Each cycle lasts approximately 28 days and each is divided into a high energy period and a low energy period of equal length. During the high energy period of a physical biorhythm we are more resistant to illness, better coordinated and more energetic; during the low energy period we are less resistant to illness, less well coordinated and tire more easily. The low period puts energy in our "batteries" for the next high period.

The "critical" or weakest time is the time of changeover from the high energy period to the low energy period, or vice versa. The critical time usually lasts a day. On a critical day of a physical biorhythm, there is a greater chance of accident or illness.

Human experience is always individual and we each have our own biorhythmic experiences. Some people experience such enormous physical turbulence on their "physically critical" days that they have to go to bed. Accidents appear to happen so frequently during turbulent biorhythms that some car insurance companies in Japan have issued biorhythm policies to policyholders in order to cut down the number of costly accidents.