INSUFFICIENT EXERCISE, A VIOLATION OF NATURAL LAWS.

Last Sunday we saw that one of the ways you can violate the natural laws is by wrong dieting. Today we will consider some other ways people violate the natural laws – “INSUFFICIENT EXERCISE!”

What is exercise? Exercise is a physical or mental activity performed to maintain, restore, or increase normal capacity.

Physical exercise involves activities that maintain or increase muscle tone and strength, especially to improve physical fitness or to manage a handicap or disability.

Physical exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness.

Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed.

You may also feel better about your appearance and yourself when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem.

Physical exercise will help you to lose weight and lower the risk of suffering some diseases.

Exercising to maintain a healthy weight decreases your risk of developing certain diseases, including type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

Exercise is useful in preventing or treating coronary heart disease, osteoporosis, weakness, diabetes, obesity, and depression.

Daily physical activity for a minimum of 35 minutes will increase exercise capacity and the ability to use oxygen to derive energy for work, decrease myocardial oxygen demands for the same level of work, favorably alter lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, prevent cardiovascular disease, and help to control body weight and body composition.

An exercise program should include developing joint flexibility and muscle strength, especially in the trunk and limbs.

This is of particular importance as people age. Exercise can have a beneficial effect in patients with depression or anxiety.

An exercise program should be neither begun nor continued if the individual or the person prescribing the exercise program has evidence that the activity is painful or harmful.

Persons have died while exercising, and heavy physical exertion may precede acute myocardial infarction, particularly in people who are habitually sedentary.

What about mental exercise? Mental exercise involves activities that maintain or increase cognitive (pertaining to the mental process of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes) faculties.

Daily intellectual stimulation improves concentration, integration, and application of concepts and principles; enhances problem-solving abilities; promotes self-esteem; facilitates self-actualization; counteracts depression associated with social isolation and boredom; and enhances the quality of one's life.

This is particularly important during aging. Most of the negative aspects of aging can be either altered or diminished by a lifelong healthy lifestyle. For example, the loss of physical fitness and strength, an inevitable consequence of aging, can be altered by an individualized fitness and strength program. Progressive loss of bone mass due to osteoporosis may be either prevented or slowed by a program of regular exercise.

Osteoporosis is a disorder in which the bones become increasingly porous, brittle, and subject to fracture owing to the loss of calcium, and other mineral components, sometimes resulting in pain, decreased height and skeletal deformities. It is common in older people primarily postmenopausal women, but also associated with long-term steroid therapy and certain endocrine disorders.

Loss of cardiac fitness can be forestalled by an ongoing aerobic fitness program. Many cases of type 2 diabetes can be controlled by exercise and an appropriate diet.

Exercise stimulates the release of endorphins, and people who participate in regular exercise programs express positive feelings toward living.

Arthritic stiffness and loss of flexibility can be influenced favorably by exercise, e.g., by walking and jogging; for patients who experience joint pain with impact exercise, swimming is an alternative.

Obesity and loss of muscle mass can be prevented or minimized. Range of motion is one aspect of exercise important for increasing or maintaining joint function.

Strengthening exercises provide appropriate resistance to the muscles to increase endurance and strength.

Cardiac rehabilitation exercises are developed and individualized to improve the cardiovascular system for prevention and rehabilitation of cardiac disorders and diseases.

A well-balanced exercise program can improve general health, build endurance, and slow many of the effects of aging.

The benefits of exercise not only improve physical health, but also enhance emotional well-being.

Precautions: Before beginning any exercise program, an evaluation by a physician is recommended to rule out potential health risks.

Once health and fitness level are determined and any physical restrictions identified, the individual's exercise program should begin under the supervision of a health care or other trained professional.

This is particularly true when exercise is used as a form of rehabilitation. If symptoms of dizziness, nausea, excessive shortness of breath, or chest pain are present during exercise, the individual should stop the activity and inform a physician about these symptoms before resuming activity.

Exercise equipment must be checked to determine if it can bear the weight of people of all sizes and shapes. Individuals must be instructed in the proper use of exercise equipment in order to prevent injury.

Exercise is used to improve health, maintain fitness and is important as a means of physical rehabilitation.

Regular physical activity has a number of other benefits:

1. Exercise will control your weight. Exercise can help prevent excess weight gain or help maintain weight loss.

When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn.

Regular trips to the gym are great, but don't worry if you can't find a large chunk of time to exercise every day.

To reap the benefits of exercise, just get more active throughout your day — take the stairs instead of the elevator or rev up your household chores. Consistency is the key.

2. Exercise will combat health conditions and diseases in your body. Exercise keeps your blood flowing smoothly, which decreases your risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Regular exercise helps prevent or manage a wide range of health problems and concerns, including stroke, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, depression, a number of types of cancer, arthritis and falls.

3. Exercise will improve your mood. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed. You may also feel better about your appearance and yourself when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem.

4. Exercise will boost your energy. Regular physical activity can improve your muscle strength and boost your endurance. Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system to work more efficiently. And when your heart and lung health improve, you have more energy to tackle daily chores.

Exercise and physical activity fall into four basic categories. 1) Endurance, 2) Strength, 3) Balance, and Flexibility.

Most people tend to focus on one activity or type of exercise and think they're doing enough. Doing them all will give you more benefits. Mixing it up also helps to reduce boredom and cut your risk of injury.

Endurance, or aerobic, activities increase your breathing and heart rate. They keep your heart, lungs, and circulatory system healthy and improve your overall fitness.

Building your endurance makes it easier to carry out many of your everyday activities: i) Brisk walking or jogging, ii) Hard work (mowing, raking, digging), and iii) Dancing.

Strength exercises make your muscles stronger. They may help you stay independent and carry out everyday activities, such as climbing stairs and carrying groceries.

These exercises also are called "strength training" or "resistance training." I) Lifting weights, ii) Using a resistance band, and iii) Using your own body weight.

Balance exercises help prevent falls, a common problem in older adults. Many lower-body strength exercises also will improve your balance: i) Standing on one foot, ii) Heel-to-toe walk, and iii) Tai Chi.

Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and can help your body stay limber. Being flexible gives you more freedom of movement for other exercises as well as for your everyday activities.

The body cannot function properly without a daily vigorous physical exercise. You should avoid a sedentary or physically inactive life. God created man to be physically active on a daily basis.

The easy sources of food without physical exercise causes physical problems, great physical sufferings, and early deaths.

Why does the body need physical exercise? For the human body to sustain physical life, four basic ingredients are necessary: i) Air (oxygen), ii) Water, iii) Food, and iv) Exercise.

Food is the least important of these basic needs, since you can live for 40 days without food. Without water, you can’t live for more than 4 days, and without air you can’t live for more than 4 minutes. Without motion, the body cell will slowly die.

Why does the body need physical activity? The tissue cells of which the body is composed require daily stimulation to maintain their elasticity and pliability.

If they are not exercised on a regular basis, they will become weak and sickly. This will cause the body to begin to malfunction. If these cells continue to go without appropriate physical exercise, they will cease to function. Rather than reproducing healthy, vital, vibrant new cells, as God designed them to do, these cells slowly die, and their deposits accumulate and add to the accumulation of toxins and debris in the body.

Let us consider some parts of the body:

a) The Lymph: The soft tissue cells of the body are constantly bathed in a watery fluid called the lymph.

The lymph has several vital functions: i) The feeding and ii) The cleansing of the cells.

But unlike the blood, which has a pump (the heart), to move and circulate the blood through the body, the lymph has no pump. Therefore, the lymph must depend on the motion or exercise of the body.

When the body is exercised vigorously on a regular basis, the lymph circulates and is able to perform its functions as God intended. But when the body is not exercised, the feeding and cleansing of the cells are hampered, and the toxins and debris begin to accumulate throughout the body.

Deposits of debris further restrict the cleansing of the lymph. And as deposits continue to accumulate, the body cells are cut off from their supply of fresh air (oxygen) and are unable to remove the debris (carbon dioxide and other wastes).

Also, the cells are prevented from receiving new building supplies. Consequently, the whole system begins to malfunction resulting in a multitude of physical problems including cancer and untimely death.

b) Tonsils and Appendix: Swollen tonsils are one of God’s warning devices. When the lymph is burdened with too heavy a load of poisons in the system, the tonsils swell. The appendix has a function similar to that of the tonsils. It also swells when the lymph system is overburdened with toxic wastes.

c) The muscles: Without adequate exercise the muscles begin to atrophy (decrease in size or shrink). You will notice this when you begin to use muscles that have not been exercised for a while. The most important muscle affected by lack of exercise is the heart (cardiac) muscle.

Without exercise, the heart begins to malfunction, arteries dog, and strokes and heart attacks result. Death can occur when you suddenly put a heavy exertion on a heart that has not been exercised.

What is the importance of exercise? A person who eats poorly and exercises will experience fewer problems than a person who eats very well but does not exercise.

Why? This is because the person who exercises is better able to remove the toxins and debris from the system.

Without daily, vigorous exercise tissue cells lose their elasticity, lymph cannot move adequately to cleanse and feed body cells, muscles atrophy, the body cells do not receive a sufficient supply of oxygen, arteries clog, mental faculty slows down, and people become forgetful and eventually senile. Death finally results.

What does it mean to be senile? This is to show a decline or deterioration of physical strength or mental functioning, especially short term memory and alertness, as a result of old age or disease.

I therefore, challenge you to wake up today and begin to exercise. Next Sunday, we are going to look at demon-inspired sicknesses.

Watch out for the next edition of Good News from the Pulpit!

• Your friend: I. I. MADUBUNYI (Senior Pastor)                           15.10. 2017.