MODERATION PAYS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6974, 4 October 1948, Page 5

MODERATION PAYS

BUT ABSTENTION NO ADVANTAGE SAYS EXPERT ON OLD AGE The hard drinker and hard smoker will not five as long as the man—or woman —of moderate habits. But the teetotaller has no advantage over the moderate drinker in his expectation of life. Dr MacDonald Critchley, the neurologist, who gave these findings to his fellow-doctors at Cambridge, is an expert on old age. And he refuted a favourite belief of the long-lived—that hard work hurts no one—by asserting that hard work by the over 45’ s does shorten life.

Dr Critchley, who was addressing the British Medical Association’s scientific meeting, said: “Moderate consumption of alcohol does not significantly shorten life when compared with total abstention, but heavy drinking does certainly curtail the expectation of life. “The tobacco habit seems definitely associated with the curtailment of the expectation of life in direct proportion of the amount you smoke. “Hard physical labour and exercise before the age of 40 does not seem to have any bearing on the matter, but after 45, especially if embarked upon for the first time, it certainly seems to run parallel with diminished expectation of life.” Dr Critchley believes that there is no real reason why healthy elderly people should not be employed helpfully in the community into their 70’s and perhaps in their 80’s. By our system of compulsory retirement at 60 or 65 we often deprive the community of a great national asset. “But wisdom does not necessarily come with age, and the attributes of youth, when lost, are not compensated by the development of other properties.”