5 FORM: HEALTH AND BODY CARE

Everybody wants to feel well and look good. It’s important to care about your health, take exercise and eat the right food. People say good health is above wealth. It means health cannot be bought and we should be careful about what we do, what we eat and drink, and see the doctor when we need advice.

Doctors have a lot of knowledge about illnesses and medicines. We visit the doctor if we have a headache, toothache, earache or pains in the stomach. People can suffer from a sore throat when they have tonsillitis, and when they have a cold they sneeze and cough. Small children often fall when they play games and then they have pains in the broken arms or legs. In fact, people often fall ill and then they have to see the doctor.

Let me tell you about my last illness.

It happened to me some months ago. It was winter and the weather was very cold. It was freezing, really. One evening I came home from the swimming pool. They day was sunny, so I had gone without my cap and gloves. When I came home, I was excited – I had done my homework in the afternoon and now had a lot of time to play on the computer. But the next morning I felt that something was wrong with me. I felt a pain in my chest and throat. I was coughing and sneezing, it hurt me to move. It was hard for me to swallow and to breathe. My mum took my temperature and it was rather high. She said it had been silly of me to forget about my cap… We had to call the doctor.

The next day the doctor came. She listened to my lungs, felt my pulse and examined my throat and tongue. My mum thought it was a serious illness like flu or tonsillitis but the doctor said I had caught a bad cold and that I would feel better soon. She prescribed some bitter medicines for my sore throat and my cough and told me to take them three times a day. I had to stay in bed for three days as I was running a high temperature. I took the medicines regularly as the doctor had said and it didn’t take me long to recover.

During that time I had to keep to a diet. I ate neither fried food nor ice-cream. I drank a lot of mineral water, warm milk with honey and other dairy products. Such food is definitely not my cup of tea! But if you want to keep fit, you should remember the rules:

·       Get up early and go to bed early to keep fit.

·       Take regular exercise to keep fit.

·       Take a cool/cold shower to keep fit.

·       Eat healthy food to keep fit.

·       Never smoke to keep fit.

·       Clean your teeth every morning and every evening to keep fit.

·       Wash your hands before you eat to keep fit.

Don’t forget, that

·       Too little food make you thin.

·       Too much food makes you fat.

·       The wrong food makes you ill.

·       The right food keeps you well.

·       Too many sweets are bad for you especially for your teeth.

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”