Keeping a good diet is very important. This     1     eating lots of different kinds of food such as fresh fruit and vegetables. And doing exercise makes you much     2     and more relaxing.

But some things are bad for your health, like     3     and drinking alcohol(酒). It’s better to give up these things or try to do     4     less.

It is a good way to have regular(有规律的)check-ups with a dentist who will check your     5    . And you can also visit an optometrist(验光师) who will check your eyes.

In recent years we’ve all become more health conscious. However, in doing so we seem to have    1    health. Health is no longer something everyone is born with. Health is a commodity. It is something you can have more of. And to    2    for this extra health you have to buy a tracksuit, eat vitamin pills, have a therapist and learn to do one-handed press-ups.

This all sounds quite harmless — until you realise it implies that people who are not perfectly formed, who are not young, sporty and sun-tanned, are less    3    people. We all want to be healthy but we should perhaps come down off the exercise bike and    4    what the word health actually means.

For a start, health is not beauty and fitness. You can have wonderful hair and huge muscles, while your internal organs are in a terrible state. The outer person is not a direct    5    of the inner person. Second, health is not a purely physical state. It’s mental as well. There are lots of fit people who are not psychologically sound and,    6    , a lot of quite seriously disabled people who are bright, happy and perfectly in tune with themselves. Besides, the    7    for physical and mental health are a matter of opinion, containing a strong social element. There’s a tribe in the Amazon rainforest which regards you as unwell if you don’t have marks of fungal (真菌) infection on your skin.

Taking all this into account, health is a terribly difficult word to define. It is nevertheless of grave    8    to do so, because unless we know what health is we don’t know what to aim for. My own favourite definition of health is ‘psychological health is the ability to love and to work’. It’s an easy thing to aim for and at the same time very difficult to arrive at. There are, however, occasional moments in everyone’s life when you experience,    9    , a great love for those around you and also a great sense of personal fulfilment. These brief moments are very hard to achieve, but they are    10    as a more worthwhile aim in life than trying to look like a supermodel.

Your mother tells me that you started smoking and now you find it difficult to     1     . Believe me, I know how easy to begin smoking and I know how     2     to stop. When I was a teenager, I also smoked and became     3     cigarettes.     4     feeling cool, you may begin to smoke because of the physical addiction to nicotine, which is one of the hundreds of chemical in cigarettes. After the drug leaves your body, you will feel bad-tempered and sometimes even feel in pain. So it is very difficult to     5    . But I did finally manage.

When I was young, I did not know much about the harmful effects of smoking. Neither did I know that it could do terrible damage to hearts and lungs. However, what I did know was that I     6     a bad     7     on my friends for I smelt terrible. When I     8     my school football team, they refused to play with me.     9    , I knew it was time to stop smoking.

I do hope you can make up your decision to stop smoking after reading this, make a change and live as long and healthy a life as I have.

Yours

Grandpa

The best thing you can do for your health: sleep well

Do you think you got enough sleep this past week? Can you remember the last time you woke up without an alarm clock, feeling     1    , not needing caffeine? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” you are not alone. Two-thirds of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain the     2     eight hours of nightly sleep.

Insufficient sleep is now one of the most significant lifestyle factors     3     whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease. During sleep, a remarkable sewage system in the brain, called the glymphatic system,     4     at its peak. As you enter deep sleep, this sanitization system clears the brain of a sticky, poisonous protein linked to Alzheimer’s, known as beta amyloid(淀粉样蛋白). Without sufficient sleep, you fail to get that power clean. With each passing night of insufficient sleep, that Alzheimer’s disease risk     5    , like compounding interest on a loan.

Perhaps you have also noticed a desire to eat more when you’re tired? This is no     6    . Too little sleep swells concentrations of a hormone that makes you feel hungry while checking a companion hormone that otherwise signals food     7    . Full as you are, you will still want to eat more. It’s a recipe linked to weight gain in sleep-deficient adults and children alike.

Worse, should you try to diet but don’t get enough sleep while doing so, it is     8    , since up to 70% of the weight you lose will come from lean body mass, not fat. Turn these facts around and you realize that plentiful sleep is a     9     tool for controlling your appetite, your weight and keeping your body in shape.

Put simply: sleep – a consistent seven- to nine-hour opportunity each night – is the single most effective thing we can do to     10     our brain and body health each day, and the reason why I strongly suggest and respect sleep scientifically and personally.

Today’s children are exhausted, and not just because one in three kids is not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation in kids (who require at least nine hours a night, depending on age) has been found to     1     decrease academic achievement, lower intelligence test scores, slow physical growth, and     2     to moodiness and irritability. While the argument for protecting our children’s sleep time is convincing, there is another kind of rest that is     3     and beneficial to our children’s academic, emotional, and creative lives: daydreaming.

Not all mental downtime (停工休息期) is alike, of course. Downtime spent playing a videogame or watching a television show may have its     4    , but the kind of downtime I am talking about is different. I’m talking about the kind of mind-wandering that happens when the brain is free of interruption and allowed to get rid of the     5     of the day. Television, video games, and other electronic     6     prevent this kind of mental wandering because they interrupt the flow of thoughts and memories that     7     the foundation of positive, productive daydreaming.

There is, however, another way of looking at mind wandering. For the individual, mind wandering offers the possibility of very real, personal reward, some immediate, some more     8    . These rewards include self-awareness, memory consolidation, future planning, simulating the     9     of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning.

In other words, daydreaming only seems lazy from the outside, but viewed from the inside or from the perspective of a psychologist, such as Kaufman, or a neuroscientist, such as Mary Helen, a complicated and extremely     10     neurological process is taking place. Viewed from the inside, our children are exploring the only space where they truly have autonomy: their own minds.

King Arthur is the figure at the heart of the Arthurian legends. He is said to be the son of Uther Pendragon and Igraine of Cornwall. Arthur is near     1    in Celtic stories. In early Latin records, he is     2    as a military leader. In later romance, he is described as a king and emperor.

One of the questions occupying those interested in King Arthur is whether or not he is a     3    figure. The debate has spread since the Renaissance, when Arthur’s authenticity was vigorously     4    , partly because the Tudor kings traced their ancestry to Arthur and use that connection as a     5    for their rule. Modern scholars have generally assumed that there was some actual person at the heart of the legends, though not of course a king with a band of knights in shining armor—though O. J. Padel in ‘The Nature of Arthur’ argues that historical     6     that we attach to Arthur can be associated with a figure who was not historical to start with.

If there is a historical basis to the character, it is clear that he would have gained fame as a warrior     7     the Germanic invaders of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Since there is no     8     evidence for or against Arthur’s historicity, the debate will continue. But what cannot be denied is the     9     of the figure of Arthur on literature, art, music, and society from the Middle Ages to the present. Though there have been numerous historical novels that try to put Arthur into a sixth century setting, it is the legendary figure of the late Middle Ages who has been     10     everyone’s imagination.