Healthy Living

The Most Precious Food Your Body Needs: Oxygen

Your body is a beautiful universe. Just like the stars in the Cosmos, you have trillions of cells in your body working individually, they are born, do their work, reproduce and die. Every cell of your body contains your genetic code and depending on the function of each little worker cell the necessary genes are turned on and active. When it reproduces, it passes on the whole code that makes you an individual you. To keep them in good working order you need to fuel them, give them energy. You don't even think about it most of the time, you don't even make an effort to keep this energy coming because you are not in control of this essential function.

YOU BREATH. AIR. OXYGEN. It is the element that is needed by your cells to produce ATP - energy to keep the co-op factory of trillions going.

An adult human in rest inhales 1.8 to 2.4 grams of oxygen per minute. This amounts to more than 6 billion tonnes of oxygen inhaled by humanity per year. (Wikipedia)
It is most unfortunate that just because it is so automated not many really think about the quality of air or the way we breath so all the trillions of cells would get enough supply.
Can you imagine your company only paying enough for some of you and maybe at the end of the line or the alphabet there would be nothing left so they just thanked you for volunteering?
So how I am supposed to buy necessities? I could die of starvation! Yes, SO COULD YOUR CELLS.
So think about how you breath. Most truckers are men, so they inherently know better how to breath deep into their stomach. Your belly should rise and fall. You fill the deeper parts of your lungs first, then you top it up. Keep it in for a few seconds and let it out a bit slower.
Try it! If you are sitting, you need to straighten up to fill up the stomach. Truck drivers sit all the time and the truck just bumps and hobbles along so without ever noticing the driver shrinks and closes the bottom part of the lung space.
So what do you do when you get out of the truck? Sit even more and watch TV?
Try walking or jogging! You need to burn the calories anyway!
My Trucker runs a few times a week when he gets to a place where it is safe and he has some time - and there is also a bathroom to take a shower afterwords. He still gets shorter by the weekend but he works out with weights and tries to give some stretching and twisting to his spine.
So remember: OXYGEN - ENERGY - GOOD BREATHING - WALKING.
I am only going to mention the quality of air in short today. Right now you can find a nice path with trees and get some fresh air, when you go home, take the family out to a nice park and play ball.
Other than that, I will talk about the responsibility of the trucking industry keeping our air cleaner later.
In short now: you can always save some fuel from going into the air unnecessarily. So you, your loved ones and everybody can breath better. Remember the 6 BILLION TONNES OF OXYGEN we need every year?
Breath deep and happy!

Pure, Clean Water

I mentioned the vital job of oxygen in an earlier post. We couldn't live without it for more than a few minutes. 

But there is something else that existed way before we had oxygen in our atmosphere to allow life on land. 

The one thing no life as we know it would exist or could have started on Earth. 

WATER.

Now see if you can appreciate water as fully as it deserves to be appreciated.

All the water budget our Earth has today arrived here more than 3 billion years ago. As our Earth was forming in  very turbulent times it got bombarded by millions of comets that each carried a few drops of water. For a long while it was way too hot to become liquid but finally it happened. The oceans were born. And life itself with it. Water - is life. Animals like the ancestors of the crocodiles, the birds or the dinosaurs  only came from the water to the land about 375 million years ago.  

I am looking at the glass of water I keep next to me. It has a history of many billions of years.This water could have arrived to Earth over 4 billion years ago, nurtured the first life forms, was part of the first plants, the first fish, it was sucked up to the atmosphere and rained back again to the surface. It was in the ocean, in the lake, the river, underground. When the earth rumbled, it got deep into the magma, dissolved minerals and when a volcano erupted,  it resurfaced again. Did you know that a cubic kilometer of ocean water can contain as much as 50 kg of gold, we just have no idea how to get it out. 

So my glass of water sizzled out from the deep of the earth and got back to the water cycle again. rained on the trees and the plants, animals ate the plants, and the water from them ... yes got back to the cycle again.

I drink this water, and give it back to earth eventually. It will be around 4 billion years from now and even longer.

It is more valuable than gold or diamond. We can live without those. 

I will drink this glass of water to help my blood flow better, to feed all trillions of working cells of mine.

CHEERS.

Drinks That are not Water

I praised water in my previous post and it is my belief that water (or tea without anything in it) is our only real drink. 

Of course cafes and drink companies would like you to think otherwise. They come up with new flavors, new packaging, hot or cold, sweet or bitter, any way you like it.

Just Remember: DRINK IS TO HELP YOUR BLOOD SUPPLY YOUR CELLS WITH OXYGEN AND NUTRITION. IT IS ONLY the NON-CALORIC WATER.

Anything else only caters to your taste buds and gives you pleasure. They have nothing to do with quenching your thirst. Actually, most of them dry you out. Like coffee or alcoholic drinks, you should actually drink a glass of water along with them to keep your body in good order. 

So you are welcome to have some coffee or ginger ale or a beer on the weekend just be aware - you don't drink it because you need it.

They are not all without benefits though.

Coffee has some beneficial oils when it is fresh like a nice espresso always freshly brewed. Timmy's Always Fresh is only good for you if you drink it within the 20 minutes it was made not just sold to you within that time. Adding sugar - just for your taste buds, adding milk - could be OK (see my next post about liquid food), adding creme - well, sorry, that can even hurt you. 

Wine, oh, yes, it's great if you drink no more than a glass a day. Resveratrol naturally found in wine is proven to be good for your cardiovascular system. But don't buy into the hype to get it in supplements.

What about fruit drinks? Sorry that has nothing to do with your thirst either. It has a lot of sugar you don't need but no real fruit. Just so called empty calories you don't need. 

All in all stick with water and water rich fruit and vegetables and enjoy the rest at you own guilt.

I personally love my espresso and my glass of wine on occasions.

Cheeers.