HEALTH STANDARD.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIII, Issue 12, 12 February 1932, Page 4

HEALTH STANDARD.

"A man's health is not to be judged by its relation to some standard or average, but by its relation to itself at an earlier period," the medical correspondent of the Times Trade Supplement wrote recently. "There are, for example, short-winded people who have never been other than shortwinded. What matters in such cases is an increase of short-windedness, not the fact of the short-windedness. To call such a man unfit because he cannot run 'the average distance for a man of his years and build' is to fall into error. And it is not* doctors only who commit mistakes of this sort. There are hundreds of anxious people to-day whose anxiety is due to their inability to play some game witn | a vigour equal to that of 'the average man.' They imagine that they are ill or are falling into illness and either over-exert themselves or deny themselves the exercise which they need. Let a man make reasonable discount for advancing age and then measure himself against himself. If he does this he will' arrive at a shrewd estimate of his true physical state and need not bother about the physical state of other folk. A tendency to fatness is present in even quite young people; so is a tendency to thinness. These tendencies will become more pronounced as time goes on. Why be surprised or upset? Fat men live oft en to great ages and enjoy excellent health all their lives. The same is true of tall men, of short men live often to great ages and endurance, and of men with little or no powers. It takes all sorts to make a world, and that world will be healthier when this fact is recognised by all."