Exercise is one element of living that affects health. However, while our bodies need exercise to be healthy, exercise can't make us healthy. Exercise can enhance health if the body isn't overburdened just trying to survive.

A regular exercise program can help you to look better, be more energetic, more flexible, stronger, and more upbeat. Yet, even if you exercise strenuously and regularly -- work out, run, walk, play tennis or golf -- you may not be healthy. Your body may be working overtime to handle the health-inhibiting effects of improper diet, polluted air, restless sleep, or persistent emotional upheaval.

When you exercise, rest, or breathe, your whole body responds. Your heart rate speeds or slows, blood pressure goes up or down, oxygen delivery to the blood stream increases or decreases, muscles contract or relax, alertness heightens or falls and energy production accelerates or subsides. Literally thousands of internal physiological responses are excited or suppressed. You live in a body that functions through a finely-tuned, well-orchestrated, integrated system of chemical and electrical responses.

So, depending on how hard the body is working just to survive, exercise can promote health -- or endanger life.

Exercise temporarily adds acid to the "atmosphere" of your internal environment. If your internal environment is "toxic" from excess acid when you begin to exercise, your body may not be able to withstand the additional stress. Those people who need to "clean up their internal environment" should limit their exercise program to walking. Those whose internal environments are in reasonably good shape may need to change their diets, and perhaps their attitudes, as they continue to exercise strenuously.

Fitness is more than being slim, trim, and muscular. It's a physiological state that is generally judged by how well a body functions in four categories:

1. Cardiorespiratory endurance -- how well the heart and blood vessels can deliver oxygen to the cells.

2. Muscular fitness -- strength and endurance.

3. Flexibility -- joints that move freely through their full range of motion without discomfort or pain.

4. Body composition -- the amount of muscle, bone, and fat.

So, does that mean if you score well in those four categories you are healthy? Not necessarily. It means you are "fit." You can be fit without being healthy. We tend to think of fitness as being the yardstick for health. Being fit certainly looks healthy -- leaning toward lean, agile, sculptured muscles, and strength. Yet, if being fit means being healthy, why do we so often read that a top-notch, fit, well-conditioned young athlete has dropped dead or had a heart attack?

You simply can't exercise your way to health. Your health depends on two criteria: 1) the condition of your internal environment, and 2) how, or how long, your body must adapt to handle long-term stress. The condition of your internal environment depends on the choices you make in what you eat, drink, and breathe, how you exercise and rest, and how and what you think. Your long-term health depends on how long you consistently make appropriate or inappropriate choices in each of these areas, not just how you exercise.

For example, a diet of excess protein may leave your internal environment struggling to retain its natural slight alkalinity. Cells produce acid as they work. The harder they work, the more acid they produce.

While exercise also has an acidifying effect on your body, the type of acid produced by cells is easily eliminated. But if your internal environment is already acid from too much protein food, even easily eliminated acid could push your acid factor into the danger zone. If you regularly eat a lot of high-protein foods such as meat, poultry, and dairy products, give your body a generous supply of foods that provide alkalizing minerals before you launch an exercise campaign. Begin by adding more servings of vegetables and fruits to your meals for a couple of weeks.

Exercise is one of the essentials for whole-body health. Your body needs exercise to keep it in the best shape possible for survival by keeping all the muscles flexible, strong, and responsive so they can do their assigned jobs effectively. And, whole-body exercise refuels your cells with oxygen. Still, health involves more than being fit. It is a by-product of making appropriate choices in all of the six essential areas of life. The bottom line is, fitness is fine -- if you're healthy! Learn to pursue health first, and then go after fitness.