Body maintenance
Looking after your body
The human body is a marvellous machine. It’s tough, but it can break, tear or bruise. It will repair itself, but may wear out if not given exactly the right amount of aerobic exercise, rest and recovery. It will adapt to new circumstances by becoming leaner, stronger, and more flexible, or by having greater endurance, but these adaptations take time.
The body needs a regular challenge to keep functioning at optimum efficiency. If you keep the body fit and well maintained, you will get more return from the food and air taken in, will discharge waste products more effectively, you will degenerate less with age or injury and will resist the invasions of viruses and bacterial infections.
Changing with age
The body will change as it ages. If you want to minimise the effects of illness, injury, and ageing, here’s a maintenance manual for your body.
- Ensure you get your body up to operating temperature before exercise by a thorough preparation phase.
- Keep your body working at a low level after exercise, to allow your body to quickly recover.
- Get competitive with yourself and set nutrition and exercise challenges.
- Include some fats in your diet for endurance, lots of complex carbohydrates for high performance and protein for repair work.
- Eat a variety of foods to ensure adequate vitamins and minerals.
- Drink lots of water as the water in the veins, arteries, lymph system, muscles, organs and skin is the transport system of the body.
- Many of the body’s repair functions only take place during deep sleep. If you wake up feeling fatigued, you haven’t given your body enough repair time. Try quiet rest or stretching periods during the day, to give your body a chance to catch up on maintenance.
- Don’t have a one-way flow of information from the mind to the body. Listen to your body.
Last Reviewed: 30 May 2002
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