HEALTH NOTES

Hutt News, Volume 20, Issue 12, 13 March 1946, Page 9

HEALTH NOTES

FREEDOM FROM DISEASE (By H. K. and D. W. Adamson) (Osteopaths) Tucked away on the northernmost border of India lies a tiny village amongst the mighty Himalayas. It is peopled by a race which has gained the distinction of maintaining a standard of healthful virility and longevity second to none in the world. They are the Hunzas, a highly intelligent race of agriculturists whose progenitors fought and resisted the conquering Genghis Khan. Today, their unexcelled physique, robust health and extraordinary cheerfulness under some of the most rigorous climatic conditions in the world have attracted the attention of health investigators in every cour try. Their physical qualities border on perfection. Why? This was the question Sir Robert McGarrison (then Major McGarrison, of the Indian Army) set himself to answer following the 1914-18 war. Stationed in a disease-stricken area in India where, in addition to malaria, such constitutional diseases as goitre and cretinism were prevalent, McGarrison remembered the Hunzas who had come under his jurisdiction some years earlier. How was it;that the Hunzas had none of the diseases which were rife in all of the areas surrounding them? They had no goitre and cretinism. Sickness of any sort was a rarity. "My own experience of them," he wrote, "provides an example of a race unsurpassed in perfection of physique and freedom from disease in general." Standard of Nutrition In vast areas of India the natives have no option in the matter of what to eat. The meagre nature of the food provided by their miserably low standard of living is totally insufficient to maintain a good standard of nutrition, and as McGarrison and others have so amply proven, without a high standard of nutrition even average good health is impossible. If, in the more highly developed western countries there is just as much evidence of nutrition disease as amongst the underfed of India, it is because the higher standard of living has not. brought with it a higher appreciation of the food requirements of a higher state of nutrition. The Hunzas secure a higher state of nutrition from the products of their agriculture. Milk, cheese, unrefined cereals,, small amounts of meat and large amounts of fruit and vegetables. On this diet they have achieved a state of health and physique which excites the admiration of all who come in contact with them.