II. Vocabulary in context. TEXT: staying healthy

TEXT: STAYING HEALTHY

Everyone knows that it's important to eat well and get enough exercise. We see beautiful, thin fashion models and want to look like them. We see commercials for exercise machines on TV showing fit, thin, smiling people exercising. Health clubs are full of people trying to get in shape. Sales of diet colas and low-calorie and low carbohydrate foods indicate that Americans want to be thin. However, two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and one in six American children is overweight. This is a large increase in the last 20 years, when 50 percent of adults and only five percent of children were overweight.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans are concerned about their weight. They spend billions of dollars on weight-loss products and health clubs. But weight is also becoming a national problem as health costs go up in response to diseases related to obesity: heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, and stroke.

What is the reason for this growing problem? First, today's lifestyle does not include enough physical activity. When the U.S. was an agricultural society, farmers ate a big, heavy meal, but they burned off the calories by doing hard physical labor. Modern technology has removed physical activity from our daily lives. Seventy-five percent of all trips are less than a mile from home, but Americans drive. Only seventeen percent of school children walk to school even though most of them live within one mile of school. And the average American child spends 24 hours a week watching TV. In most physical education classes, kids are active for just three minutes.

Another reason for the weight problem is the American diet.

But, anyway there is no denying the fact, that good health is better than the best medicine. Is there anything more important than health? It's doubtful. If your body suffers from any disorder your mind suffers with the body too. You can't be good either at work or at studies. Aches and painslead to irritation,nervous breakdown, exhaustion, apathy. And if your health is good, you are usually in a good mood. You have a sound mind in a sound body, as the old Latin saying goes. Taking medicines is an unpleasant thing, of course, and if you want to avoid it, you should keep yourself fit. There is no doubt, if a person doesn’t take exercises, he can easily catch an illness.

You can always go and see a doctor, and you are sure he will examine you carefully: feel your pulse, sound your chest, heart and lungs test your blood pressure and give advice. The only thing you have to do is to follow his directions. Otherwise a slight ailment can develop into an incurable malady