HINTS on healthy living are the theme of the Queen’s annual Commonwealth Day speech this year, which will be broadcast in the organisation’s 53 member nations.

Sounding at times like her high-fibre organic elder son, the monarch extols the virtues of eating better food and taking more exercise.

As she approaches her 80th birthday next month in robust health, the Queen appears to practise what she preaches, with her Tupperware boxes of low-fat breakfast cereal, her love of riding and walking and her aversion to smoking following the death of her father from lung cancer aged 56.

Chiming with today’s Commonwealth Day theme of “Health and Vitality: the Commonwealth Challenge”, the Queen tells her listeners: “There are few feelings more satisfying than waking to a new day with a sense of wellbeing. Good health is a precious gift.”

For many, the Queen says, better health is in their own hands. Poor health is sometimes linked to the way we choose to live. But many of us can often take steps to eat better food or take more exercise.

Currently in Australia to open the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne this week, the Queen adds: “The importance of good health is so wonderfully exemplified on the sports field. Sporting events can be the spur to extraordinary human achievement.”

She says of the Games: “Commonwealth athletes will gather once more in a spirit of goodwill and fellowship, and will strive to achieve new heights of excellence. We will clearly see what exercise at the very highest level can contribute to both body and spirit.”

But her Commonwealth Day message has a darker side, acknowledging more serious health issues. Of the 40 million people living with HIV-Aids, half are Commonwealth citizens. Half a million women die each year in pregnancy and childbirth.

“Ignorance and lack of understanding about these issues sometimes breeds uncertainty, even fear, and the inclination to turn from those who are unwell. But we know, for example, that someone who is HIV positive can, with proper support, lead a full and rewarding life,” the Queen says.

She praises Commonwealth governments for tackling disease but urges them to do more. “Polio, for example, used to cast its shadow across many countries. Today, thanks to concerted international action, just a handful still need to eliminate polio. The same approach and commitment to other global scourges, such as malaria and tuberculosis, can achieve equally impressive results.”

The Queen concludes: “There is a traditional proverb which says: ‘He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.’ This year, as governments search for new ways to tackle these important challenges, we as individuals can also play our part so that, in pursuing health and vitality for all, we bring hope to the world.”

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