Concerns: Sorting out health scares

Are you struggling to decide what to eat or drink or what ‘vice’ or treat to give up after the excessive partying? No need to fret. Just relax and take a deep breath, while we sift facts from fiction to offer some calming advice.

Water

We’re all encouraged to drink two litres (around eight glasses) of water daily to replace what we lose through normal bodily functions.

Too little may find us feeling tired and struggling to concentrate, but excessive water intake can be dangerous. Some detox advocates wrongly suggest drinking only water and eating nothing but fruit and vegetables with no salt for a number of days, but medical experts claim this is not only unnecessary and ineffective but also potentially dangerous.

What’s the advice?

As an absolute minimum, we should aim for six glasses a day. That figure’s calculated on the basis that, daily, we lose about 100ml of water breathing out, 500ml sweating and another 500ml through our urine.

While it’s sensible to drink up to two litres a day, food, especially fruit and vegetables, can provide around 20 per cent of our water intake. Some foods have a higher water content than others. For instance, a cucumber has 96 per cent, a tomato 94 per cent, onions 89 per cent, while a plate of grilled chicken has around 70 per cent water content. Do ensure you remain hydrated while exercising.

Drinking about a quarter of a pint of fluid (one small glass) for every hour of exercise helps.

Exercise

You do not need impractical levels of exercise to be healthy. Benefits kick in from a low-level programme: that means moderate exercise three times per week for 20 minutes, at a rate that raises the heart rate by 30 per cent, makes you sweat and raises your breathing level.

That’s enough to begin to lower LDL, the bad cholesterol, and raise HDL, the protective cholesterol, lower blood pressure and improve muscle tone. You may even lose weight!

What’s the advice?

Shopping till you drop or jogging could be good ways to keep fit. Women burn off more than 12,000 calories each year just by shopping.

Not surprisingly, men don’t have as much stamina and with fewer and shorter trips lose only around 9,000 calories a year.

A 20-year study of people aged 50 found that elderly joggers remained fit and active for longer than non-runners, despite fears that over-active pensioners might end up crippled by arthritis and orthopaedic injuries.

The study has a very pro-exercise message. If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise.

Salt

We all know that eating too much of the white stuff is bad for us – but a lot of us are still eating too much salt, resulting in an estimated 14,000 premature deaths a year.

According to a rough estimate, adults are eating an average 8.6g of salt a day – 44 per cent more than the recommended daily level of 6g.

Eating too much can increase the risk of high blood pressure which, in turn, is linked to heart disease and strokes.

What’s the advice?

Too much salt is bad news, but we shouldn’t cut salt out completely.

Some sodium is needed for the body to function properly, especially in summer. It helps to regulate fluid balance and is needed for nerves and muscles, including those in the heart, to work properly.

Many of us are not aware of how much salt we absorb daily through our food.

We are all still eating too much salt. That’s why it’s so important that we check labels and choose the lowest salt options.

Cutting down on toast and sandwiches could help. Bread is the single biggest source of salt in the nation’s diet. Sliced loaves have already been made less salty, along with breakfast cereals, soups, cooking sauces, biscuits and cakes.