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Dr. Steven Griffiths Monthly Column, published in the Times & Transcript
Regular exercise keeps your body in check
Tuesday September 16, 2008
Blood pumping, heart hammering; sculpted musculature resplendent in the glow of noble gases.
Oh magnificent beast! Oh gift of natural selection and spectral omniscience!
But enough about me at the hospital gym.
Pounding on that human hamster wheel at NuBodys, you might think it's all about making the ticker stronger and the air bags more efficient; perhaps some porridge gets cleaned out of the pipes in the process. Well sure, that's part of it.
But listen up.
What follows is the most important thing you're going to read today, perhaps this decade. My seven readers are smart enough to know this already but hey you guys, do me a favour and pay it forward.
Exercise educates and facilitates your body to look for cancer cells; helps to expose them, removes their infrastructure and keeps the lid on them after treatment. It's just that simple.
Nipping about our circulatory system, checking in at bases along the way, we have a most amazing microscopic security system at work in our bodies.
Imagine that TV show CSI in tiny perspective; millions of tiny 'Grissoms' scooting around tubular highways, constantly combing over the evidence and feeling, sniffing, tasting for the slightest signs of mischief. When a collective eyebrow is raised, they return to base with the evidence and choose the correct way to respond to any monkey business.
Hey this metaphor stuff is fun! Let's pretend Moncton is our body.
Let's say that within our community of Bodytown there's a cruel and lawless corner called 'Winchester,' to pick a name entirely at random.
You know this type of district: the fleet of viciously chromed SUVs with every household; callous ne'er-do-wells hanging out on manicured corners in Abercrombie & Fitch hoodies and surly expressions, the million-dollar pavement job; oh wait that's the town hall.
Suddenly, a drug drop-off conducted by the Winchester gang-bangers goes horribly wrong! There's chaos everywhere! We need help!
But Bodytown's answer to Police Chief Wiggum is stuck in traffic on Paul Street. On Labour Day weekend, yet.
Worse, he's being given advice and directions by three Mayor Quimbys. Also, the annual migration of the Hall's Creek rats has begun and Discovery Channel is in town to film it. There's a camera crew on every corner.
In other words, a health threat confronts Bodytown, a town that has not been 'exercised' and thus, has little in the way of 'common sense' quality control, little opportunity to get to the dodgy parts of town to restore order and decency.
So let's get Bodytown into regular exercise mode and see how the situation changes.
Chief Wiggum is replaced by a crisply uniformed Michael Phelps clone in a tricked-out Lambourghini that hovers up over the congestion of Champlain Mall and shoots off toward Main Street (or whatever direction Camelot is in).
But how will Chief Phelps get directions? How will he know what to do? On whose authority will resources become available?
Ha! Your fitness has you covered, Bucko.
In an exercised Bodytown, Sarah Palin is in control, simultaneously field-dressing a moose while delivering quintuplets.
Before you know it Chief Phelps is slapping 'You Create Vacuum!' indictments on the gas guzzlers, implementing car-pooling and shaking down the local Secret Handshake Club for education and research funding.
Meanwhile, Sarah P. goes on a whirlwind tour of construction sites between Magnetic Hill and Sheddy Beach, emasculating pot-bellied Bodytown Public Works Department sluggards by digging and re-asphalting potholes herself, all the while nursing the kiddies; Tackle, Wolf, Clamp, Cuda and Nigel.
The Winchester drug trade dries up, traffic moves smoothly and suddenly we've got a richly resourced environment for the townsfolk.
Hey look! Sarah's even sanctioned an interactive 'health and science' exhibit to be placed next to the chapel at the Casino.
People, this is what happens when you exercise.
Your white cells zip about in those expanded pot-hole free blood tubeways, picking up evidence of waste and questionable sense in the rarely-travelled country lanes; processing it, handing it off, administering to it selflessly and appropriately, updating the log book and putting resources where they need to be allocated.
Less butt-scratching and butt-smoking in the summer, more snow removal and safer school drop-offs in the winter.
In other words exercise doesn't merely make Bodytown stronger, it makes it smarter, helping it to recognize things that don't make sense.
Why does it have to conduct so much quality control?
It's part of our wiring. If you didn't have that little bit of potential for genetic change in you, then you wouldn't be visiting your Place Of Worship (POW) or savouring your Reasons For Living (RFLs -- which might include throwing money into a magnetic pit).
But at the same time that process must be kept under stringent control; fact-checkers and detectives must be kept on line, and with constant access. Sloppy, monopolizing Internet Service Providers need not apply.
So we need to make sure about the directive for bodily education and the surveillance of cells which vary a little too much.
Biologically, 80 per cent of us are past our 'sell by' date and if you don't get up and 'shake that thang,' exercise that body, then mistakes will pile up to the point of a traffic jam.
We need efficient bodily CSI, decision-making infrastructure and construction crews.
That's where walking, treadmilling, snowshoeing or the annual Running of the Hall's Creek Rats might be helpful.
Look into it.
Sweat on, and stay frosty.
Article as published:
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/search/article/416393
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