GOOD HEALTH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 72, 24 February 1932, Page 2

GOOD HEALTH

HOW IT IS IMPAIRED. THE VALUE OF FASTING. “FRESH AIR THE FINEST FOOD.”. James Douglas, in one of his inspiring articles in the Daily Express, writes as follows on the subject of "Health”: —In Samuel Butler’s satirical “Erowhon” there is a description of the trial of a. young man who was found guilty of tne crime of labouring under pulmonary consumption. Although he was only twentyfour, he had been imprisoned fourteen times for illnesses of a more or less hateful character. He bad been convicted of aggravated bronchitis. The Erewlionian judge sentenced him to imprisonment for life. Ido not go so far as the Erewhonians in regarding ill-health as a crime, but I do say that it is a crime to lose your health by. carelessness, by violations of the laws of health, or by the formation of unhealthy habits. I feel guilty when I am ill, for I know that I have done many, things whioh I ought not to have done, and that I have left undone many things which I ought to have done, and this is the reason why there is no health in me. I started life with a large balance of health in the bank, for my parents and grandparents were healthy, and lived to a ripe old age. But I drew too many cheques on the Bank of Good Health, and acquired the evil habit of living on an overdraft. Instead of keeping myself fit, I kept myself unfit. I put errors in diet as the chief cause of ill-health. lam convinced that all my life I have eaten too much and too often. It really does not matter what you eat if you do not eat too much or too frequently. Almost any diet will keep a healthy man healthy if it is assimilated, and its waste products are not too voluminous to be eliminated. I am sure that four meals a day are fatal to the man who leads a sedentary life. We start the day with a hearty and heavy breakfast. The British breakfast would kill a horse. It usually starts with a plate of porridge, milk and often cream. It then goes on to a plate of bacon and eggs. Some idiots add a kipper or sausages or kidneys. The mad meal is washed down with libations of strong tea. The mixture produces indigestion and dyspepsia. It fills the hlood and the tissues with toxins. Some fools have a snack at eleven and then devour a heavy and hearty lunch of fish, ir-at, and stodgy pudding. Then tn<,re is afternoon tea, with bread and butter and cakes. Dinner is another insane orgy of greed and gluttony.. Soup is followed by fish and fowl and meat and more clogging pudding. There are lunatics who pile a heavy supper on a heavy dinner, and wonder, why they sleep badly and rise in the morning with a headache. The grotesque contours of middle age are caused by the four meal habit. I believe that the man who is never hungry is never well. It is worth your while to fast a whole day in order to taste the rare and exquisite pleasure of natural hunger. - , I have never felt so well as I felt after three days’ fast. During a fast the whole body enjoys a holiday and the mind joins in the festival. A fast is indeed a feast. If we were wise we would give each other fasting parties instead of dinner parties. Another universal _ error is the habit of drinking with all meals. It requires a will of iron to eat without drinking. Most of us take drugs to cuntereract our habits. Drugging is the curse* of civilisation. Nobody can tell us where the drugs go after we swallowed them. We are saturated with all sorts of chemicals. They are lurkin our tissues. We do not get rid of them. The best thing to do with a drug after you buy it is to throw it away. ■ . • Fresh air is the finest food in the world, but few of us get enough of it. Keep all your’windows wide open. •The reason why a holiday is a tonic is because you live in the open air. But it is not necessary to go away in order to live in the open air; You should have open-air food every day ar.d every night. I believe in exercise and in exercises. Walk whenever you can. Motoring has deprived many people of the power to walk. The poor man who is forced to walk is fortunate. The habit of practising simple physical exericses every morning at an open window is hard to form, but it is of incalculable value.

Deep breathing is another valuable habit. Most of us starve our lungs of fresh air. We are shallow breathers. We do not use half our lungs 1 . When I am tired I can renew my joy of life by ten minutes of deep breathing. It drives away a headache faster than any drug. The exhilaration produced by deep breathing is greater than that produced by a pint of champagne. I once suffered from insomnia, but I cured myself by forming the habit of deep breathing in a regular rhythm. I discovered that if you teach the lungs to inhale and exhale rhythmically they go on doing so after you fall asleep. Few people know . anything about deep breathing. It is an art which, you must learn yourself. It took me years to perfect it. It helped me to go through a gravely critical operation. Nobody can teach you deep breathing. You must practise it yourself until it becomes spontaneously natural. It is not a series of violent sniffs and snorts gasps and gulps. It is the slow, gentle and gradual process of oxygenating the whole brain and the whole body through the blood, from the tips of the toes to the tips of the fingers. If fresh air were as costly as cham£agne everbyody would want to drink uge draughts of it. Because it is free we despise it. We sit all day ' and sleep all night in stuffy airless rooms. We breathe used stale air over and over again. We do not realise that.air should be breathed only once. Men cover every inch of skin except the face and , the hands. Their thick layers 1 of tweed and wool keep the air away from the skin and the skin away from the air. They sleep under heavy blankets and eiderdowns that starve the • skin of air all night as well as all day. Women are more sensible. I believe in airing tile skin. Have you ever taken a regular airbath night and ‘ morning It is a good plan to give at least an hour a day to this habit, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the eveningi Even ten minutes 1 in the open sunshine and the open air is a -magnificent tonic.

Water is health. We should drink it Between meals. We should also bathe in it at least twice a-day. The mind is nine-tenths of health. I believe that the mind can be kept in a state of joyous cheerfulness by thinking fresh and happy thoughts by resolutely refusing to think dark thoughts, gloomy thoughts, and poisonous thoughts. We should be as fastidious about what we put into our

mind as about what we put into our mouth. # Wage war on doubt, suspicion, anger, hate, and all corroding and corrupting feelings and enjofions 1 . Keep the bad old.-toxins out of the mind and let'in all the good new toxins of cheerfulness, gusto, sympathy, and kindness.

Think well of those around you. Search for their good points and ignore their bad pionts. It is healthful to cultivate the grace of smiling and laughing. Few of us smile enough or laugh enough. Faith in yourself and in others is an instrument of health. Frederic Myers said that faith is “the resolution to - stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis.” Faith, in fine, is health. The man who is bubbling- over with valiant faith is hard to kill.