Food, water and exercise.

There was this lady who told a group of us that she was so tired this morning because she had walked faster than usual. The reason for doing so was the huge breakfast she had consumed just before going to the hill. As she was a lady who had a mind of her own and never accepts opinions of others easily, I kept my mouth shut.

Later, as the group dispersed and I was left walking with just one lady, this lady told me that there was a guy who would take a fast walk as an interval during a dinner feast. She also had a relative who exercise after dinner. She asked me what I thought of the other lady's walking fast due to the amount of food consumed.

I told her it was based on what seemed to many as logical behaviour. Unfortunately, it is not based on sound knowledge. In the first place we ought to understand that food takes a few hours to be digested and turned into energy. Furthermore, we ought not exercise on a full stomach. When food has been consumed, more blood goes to the stomach area while in exercise blood is needed at the moving parts of the body. Therefore, we should not load our tummy just before exercise.

However, such practice of exercising after a meal is quite common as there are people who wrongly believe that such exercises can help quicken the digestive process. If these people were talking about mild or slow movement, then I think it is alright but certainly not brisk walking or running after a heavy meal.

So, if just before going for our exercise, we feel a little hungry, we should just take a snack with mostly carbohydrates in it just to stave off the hunger. After exercise, we ought to wait a little while before consuming food. Let the blood go to the muscles concerned to replenished oxygen-starved muscles as well as remove waste products and lactic acid from them.

When we think of food, we must never forget the essential water to keep our body hydrated so that circulation of blood and removal of toxic substances are able to take place. Sometimes, especially so the ladies and the older adults, we take too little water and a certain degree of dehydration is consistently present. For our organs to work well, and in the first place that is the reason we exercise, we must have sufficient liquid in our body for the all important circulation of blood to take nutrients and oxygen to all the cells as well as remove wastes and toxins from the body. So, we must always remember to take more water even if that means the inconvenience of having to visit the bathroom more often. I remember the bad old days when women went shopping the whole day without stopping to urinate. Not that there was no necessity to do so but the difficulty of finding suitable clean places forced them to keep a tight hold on their urine and refuse the intake of liquids. It was of course not good for their health and as a result more women than men had urinary tract infection. (Of course, there is the other reason for the urinary tract infection which was the washing of the anus towards the vagina after excreting.)

Well, those bad old days are over and we now have supermarkets as well as petrol stations with clean toilets everywhere. Gone should be the problem of retaining one's urine.