Health Wise- Health is Wealth

WALKING effective anti-depressant. Take a daily dose.

HEALTHY LIVING – KEEP WALKING

1. Walking is the single most popular form of exercise in the entire universe. It can be done by anyone, anywhere and almost anytime. Studies have shown that walkers who burned the same number of calories as runners saw identical cardiovascular health benefits, plus the same reduced risk of hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Walking helps you burn calories, build muscle while also boosting your mood. 2. In the human body, the two legs have 50% of the nerves of the body, 50% of the blood vessels and 50% of the blood of the body flowing through them. The legs have the largest circulatory network connecting the body, so medical practitioners recommend we all walk daily. 3. When you exercise your feet they remain healthy because the current of blood flows smoothly, it, therefore, resonates that people who exercise their legs regularly have strong leg muscles that aid a strong heart. 4. Ageing starts from the feet upwards. In young people the accuracy and speed of transmitting instructions between the brain and the legs are high but as one gets older, it decreases; this is why the elderly and senior citizens should maintain a routine of walking to constantly exercise the legs. 5. It is advisable to walk at least 10,000 steps daily to strengthen the legs and slow down ageing. You can walk for at least thirty to forty minutes to ensure that the muscles of the legs remain healthy.

KEEP WALKING!

How Smart is Your Brain?

Fagara zanthoxyloides

‘Orin Ata’

Fagara zanthoxyloides (akaZanthoxylum zanthoxyloides) is a shrub whose trunks, branches, branchlets, leaf stalks and inflorescence axes are covered by prickles or thorns with dense, dark-green foliage. The thorns extend to the leaf stalks and the leaflets midribs and the leaves are slightly obovate. The flowers are greenish-white in narrow axillary and terminal panicles usually without thorns. It fruits between July and September.

In Nigeria, Fegara has a popular use; roots, young shoots and twigs are used as chewing sticks. It is hot and peppery; the reason it is called “Orin ata” by Yorubas. When chewed in the mouth, the roots give a warm, pungent, benumbing effect with profuse salivation, believed to be beneficial to the elderly and persons with sore gums and other oral diseases. A decoction of the roots is also used as mouthwash and sore throat. Traditional medical practitioners use it to treat a wide range of disorders like toothache, urinary and venereal diseases, rheumatism and lumbago.

Fagara zanthoxyloides is used for the management of sickle cell disease. In the 1970s, late Abayomi Sofowora, a Professor of Pharmacognosy at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, discovered the antisickling property of Fagara. Some of the metabolites of Fegara have also shown cytotoxic, molluscicidal, anticonvulsant, anti-sickling, anaesthetic, antibacterial, anti-hypertensive and anti-inflammatory properties.

*CAUTION- Consult a Medical Doctor before taking any herbal or orthodox medication