You have a skeleton to hold you up and muscles to hold you in. If you don't take care of both, the results are devastating to your whole being.

1. If you slouch, either because you work at a desk, or because of low self esteem, or depression, your chest muscles contract. When this happens, your breathing becomes restricted, you don't draw as much air into your lungs as you should, and your blood, and therefore every organ in your body, becomes oxygen starved and de-enervated.

The other result of slouching is that your shoulders and upper back muscles are now doing all of the work. They are constantly in stress. This results in painful neck and shoulder muscles, headaches and irritability. Also, if your upper back and shoulders are not positioned correctly you are more at risk of frozen shoulder, bursitis, pinching, strains, sprains and dislocations.

2. Your abdominal muscles, if not exercised, become weak and flabby. But you still have to move and support your body. What happens now is that your lower back muscles begin to do the work of your abdominal muscles -- something they were never designed to do. The result is more pain in the lower back.

3. Now, let's move down to your gluteus muscles, or buttocks. These muscles support the lower back, hips and pelvis. You need to exercise these muscles not only to have an attractive rear view, but also so that you don't damage your pelvis, hips or incur lower back problems. Exercising your glut's and pelvic muscles can go a long way towards preventing arthritis in your hips in later life.

4. Moving still further down: Your hamstrings, those muscles running down the back of your thighs, can cause still more backache and even knee problems if they are allowed to become shortened and inflexible.

5. Finally, it's important to move and stretch your spine. Your spinal column is not only at the centre of all movement it also works in conjunction with your rib cage to protect your internal organs. When you exercise your spine, you also stretch and massage these internal organs, which greatly improves their function.

So, what have you learned from this short anatomy lesson?

You can see that exercise is not just something you do to look good or to give you more energy, although these are certainly some of the pleasing side effects. Exercise is in fact essential for your health and your physical and mental well-being. It's not something you should think about "getting around to".

Now is the time to make exercise an integral part of your day.