Sports and Health

In the sports field of a famous university in the south, there is this slogan: I exercise, I am healthy, I am happy. The logical relationship must be: because I exercise, I am healthy, so I am happy. This article attempts to clarify the logical relationship between exercise and health. More importantly, it wants to point out some wrong views on exercise and inspire everyone to think about and establish daily habits of exercise and health that are suitable for them. This article does not talk about science and does not have accurate arguments and arguments. It is just some small ideas or some well-intentioned criticisms. It is only shared with relatives and friends. Discussion is allowed, and any form of debate is not accepted.

First, let’s take a look, what is exercise? Luck means movement and rotation. Luck has a recurring meaning. There is a saying in "Zhouyi" that "the sun and the moon move around, one is cold and the other is hot." In Liu Xiang's "Nine Sighs. Fengfen", there is a saying that "the intestines perform nine movements in one day". Movement is activity and action, which corresponds to tranquility; in the Analects of Confucius, there is a sentence that "the wise man moves, the benevolent man is still". Therefore, to put it simply, we can understand that exercise includes two aspects: the operation of the organs and the activities of the limbs.

Secondly, let’s look at what health is. Healthy means that the body is strong (Du Fu: Even if there are strong women plowing the hoe, the grass grows on the long acres without anything); health means that the blood and Qi are smooth (ancient poem: Life is like a Nanshan stone, the four bodies are healthy and straight). "Kang" is understood as "smooth", for example: Kangzhuangdao. I heard this explanation from the conversation between Xu Wenbing and Liang Dong, and I agree with it. Insert a sentence: The dictionary explanation of the word "kang" is this. If it is "health", then health means health; if it means "ankang", then health means peace; if it means "rice health", then health means chaff. ; None of them are worthy of belief.

If we understand the connection between exercise and health, we can say: Movement leads to health, and movement leads to health. The current misunderstanding about exercise is that most people just move and do not exercise. Therefore, many people are only healthy but not healthy. Why do you say this? For example: Now when it comes to sports, everyone likes to run, play ball or go to the gym. Do these exercises give the organs the proper exercise they deserve? Most of them don't. Instead, strenuous exercise such as running causes damage to the organs. This is simply reflected in the loss of appetite, excessive sweating, and organ ischemia and dehydration. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, excessive sweating is a sign of loss of blood and yang. It does not mean that you cannot sweat, but you must sweat appropriately.

The incorrect concept of exercise established after the concept that exercise leads to health is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, which brings great harm. We have to admit that modern people's work and rest schedules are no longer normal, or they regard abnormality as normal, which is what the "Huangdi Neijing" calls "taking arrogance as normal". Many young people (college students are the victims in the hardest-hit areas) are used to staying up late. Thinking that exercise leads to health, people who are in urgent need of health find ways to exercise and go for a run every time they stay up late. But because I stay up late, of course I can't get up early, and then sleep during the day, I am very energetic at night, so there are many people running on the sports field at 10 pm. I sweat like rain until 11 o'clock in the evening, take a shower and eat late night snacks, and continue to stay up late. Because I exercise, my body is very healthy and everything is fine! Also, modern people drink a lot. Considering that exercise can be healthy, many drinkers also enjoy running and playing ball. In fact, drinking causes damage to the internal organs, and what is needed is to use "luck" to regulate them.

This is also related to the fact that many people drink large amounts of iced drinks due to heat and lack of water after exercise, which causes particularly serious injuries. After exercise, blood flows to the limbs. At this time, the organs need to be replenished, but what they urgently need is definitely not cold water. Drinking cold drinks dilutes the gastric juices and causes damage to the stomach. At the same time, because the cold drinks are poured in, the blood flow is further hindered, forcing the heart to overload the blood supply, and the heart is suddenly greatly damaged. To put it simply using the word "luck", these wrong practices cause the organs to function abnormally, which will cause invisible harm to people in the long run. After your body is injured, you still have to ask, why am I not healthy even though I have exercised? In fact, you are just active, but not lucky; you are just healthy, but not healthy.

There is a lot of "luck" mentioned above. Some readers may ask, how do you know that I am not "well"? If you want me to be lucky, how can I be considered lucky? To see whether a person is healthy, you can look at his face, hair, etc. However, there are simpler ways to judge: whether the stool is clear; whether the sleep is normal. The misunderstanding that modern people make when judging from these two aspects is that many people mistake diarrhea for constipation. Many relatives and friends around me accept this concept: eating more fruits will help defecation. Then I ate a lot of apples, pears and other fruits.

I asked jokingly: Apples and pears were introduced to Guangdong from the north. Could it be that before these fruits were introduced to Guangdong, all southerners suffered from constipation? In fact, this is the case. I am not sure or denying whether fruit can help with defecation. I hope you can tell for yourself: your stool is really smooth and it is not diarrhea caused by eating fruit. The criterion is to see whether the stool is formed. If you always rely on having unshaped stools to ensure that you are not constipated, you should have this awareness: you are actually relying on the loss of your own gastrointestinal fluid to maintain smoothness, and this will definitely be inappropriate in the long run.

Don’t forget that “luck” also contains the word “quiet”. We must say that modern people are too lacking in “quiet”. The "quietness" of sleep is a kind of "luck". Some classmates will say, "Hey, I can sleep very well. I can't get up until nine in the morning after a trip." I said, it’s not that I can’t sleep, it’s that I’m really tired. Then I asked, can you go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6am? Wow, it’s ten o’clock, how can you sleep? This...of course there are a lot of arguments to be made, there are certainly a lot of factors to consider. However, don’t forget that the biological clock that humans have formed over thousands of years has only been destroyed in the past few decades: twilight hour (21-23 o’clock) should have been the end of the day, but now for some people, twelfth hour is the beginning of a day’s night life. Look at a group of sports enthusiasts running sweating profusely at the stadium at 10 o'clock in the evening. Shouldn't we think about it? If you can't sleep when it's time to sleep, how can you say you're healthy?

How to keep the internal organs healthy is really a difficult topic, and the more you talk about it, the less scientific it becomes: meditation, luck, zhanzhuang, Tai Chi, etc. all address this issue. It’s too complicated, and if you don’t explain it, it will be wrong and impossible to explain. I would like to suggest the simplest possible method, which is to do abdominal exercises. Morning and evening, use the palm of your hand to push from top to bottom on your belly, push it to the Dantian area, push it for more than 20-30 times, and push it until you fart. It should be ready within about 2-3 minutes. Not to mention anything else, if you stick to it for a week, you can avoid eating fruit and still have bowel movements every day, then you will have achieved your goal.

If abdominal exercises can help you, what I would like to suggest is: grasp the principles of health judgment, pay attention to observe your own health status; think about whether your living habits are "taking things for granted" , is there anything worth improving?

Exercise may bring health, but don’t just move without exercise, but move and exercise. In essence, health does not come from exercise. People are born healthy. As long as you do not damage your body, you can be healthy. I wish you all: good health and happiness.

June 2017

Modified on June 17, 2017