Show DIET EXERCISE AND HEALTH by W H MD it should be the willing daily duty ot of every ervery home keeper to see that every member of her and his family gets somewhere near a balanced diet and to see that each one should take the appropriate exercise to speed up equally every life ie process Is that all would enjoy the abundant life that nature ha has haa s arranged for each ono one of us about three years since thoro there appeared sn in the american magazine an article on public health which so well expressed the health situation that it will bear repeating the author was dr richard C cabot at one time professor at havard medical college and chief of the medical staff of the massachusetts general hospital he is the author too of medical books which have added to his reputation the article begins in this way 1 I am often asked why dont you doctors keep us well you ought to be paid to prevent illness on the chinese plan I 1 answer there are two reasons 1st ast because we doctors dont know enough and 2nd and because you for a single day make the sacrifices necessary to keep you well so at that time according to dr cabot the health situation amounted to this the doctors know and the people care and although wo ive have learned much in ili three icara 5 cars the statement is largely true yet I 1 know that 40 years ago in ili a medical course we did not get enough of the practical health laws to intelli gently take care of our own health A medical education prepared us to try to help those who were paying the penalty tor for health laws broken the more health laws broken the better would be business to ask a physician to keep you well when you were not ill was to aake take an unfair advantage odthe of the profession but the war has worked on considerable sid erable change in the doctors and in tho the people there is today more interest taken in the subject of general health than ever before when nearly one third of our young men in the different states from 14 to 46 percent were rejected as unfit to protect their country it tended to awake people and when we saw the result of but a couple of months of a balanced ration and proper exercise and after a few more months when we saw that the best trained troops of the foremost military nation of europe even when behind almost impregnable entrenchments ments could not stop our boys people began a little to appreciate the value of right living for it required more than superb courage it required sterling endurance to go on oil and on da niter alter day to assured victory when we note the marvelous advances in many directions by research discovery and invention it seem that we ought to find what is of the greatest importance every part of every day something of a like advance it would seem that we ne ought to hear from every watch boer of health the cheering cry of all Is well what are the facts some time since a prominent citizen investigated some of tile the facts and it may be instructive to notice them in 1915 it was announced in ili tile the papers that E president taft had suddenly begun a course of vigorous bodily exercise the news interested people because mr tafts habits were typical of so many hard working head working americans lie he stood to tho the people as the type of human being who could retain health and the capacity for quantities of work of tile the highest type and paying little or no attention to health laws but when his limit was reached and lie he had found out what was in his life lie ho set to bork with good sense and energy to correct it ile he succeeded in ili restoring his health not because ho he had bad more means or more leisure than most of us ho he did not go to expensive sanitariums or nr physical culture institutes or foreign baths he did simply what is within roach reach of every one ot ol us rich or poor great or humble lie he exercised and learned how to eat cat if mr taft had merely saved himself that alone would have been of great value to his bis country and the world for he has since done no doubt the most valuable work of 0 his life but he did more than that his personal experience led him into a public movement for better health for the people and he became chairman of the board of 0 directors of tho the lite life extension institute he learned what science had to tell him he found that while sanitation and public health work had lessened the old fatal scourges urges of communicable diseases and in that respect had much lengthened the span of human life the individual american was cutting that safeguarded life almost in two not by catching diseases as aa of old but simply by wrong rong living he found that while ho he and goethals and dr gorgas were cleaning up a worlds best hole ili the isthmus of 0 panama america at home homa was calmly killing itself quite unnecessarily at a rate estimated at 1500 a day he found that hile americans in he found that while americans in the tropics were wiping out yellow heart and arterial troubles kidney and digestive ma maladies ladles and rl nervous arvous disorders were increasing annually he le learned that not far from one third of the men of ages from IS to GO 60 have evidences of approaching pro aching organic disease or already have it in ili one or more forms he learned that four out of ton deaths from all causes are preventable in massachusetts and new jersey where the most reliable statistics are available the increase of the death rate from diseases of the heart blood vessels kidneys nervous and diges tive systems has been nearly per cent in 3 30 years compare this with the record of child welfare work in the united states thirty years v ago the infant death rate was two hundred and eighty six in one and The most recent decent rate given lathe 0 1 survey is ninety two in one thousand less than one third that of 0 1 thirty years ago in ten years according to the cen sus records of a group of over five f million working people the death rate from these diseases increased as ioli foli I 1 lows and nervous diseases 19 per cent heart 29 per cent liver and digestion 34 per cent kidney and urinary system 43 3 per cent in ili a recent work on oil discus dl seass of the heart this statement is made the bt of chicago luj in of all the large cities of american and europe show a marked increase in the death rate from heart dis discasey cases in ill recent lecent years also of brighi a disease which is practically illy a disoso of the blood vessels vessel tf if we ive add the increased death rate frocil roin an all exhausted heart during acute alk ness or oper operations we find that today ten tell times more people die from diseases of th thu heart and blood ves sels than 50 years ngo ago and ali these diseases are all unnecessary preventable for years tho highest death rate has been that of tuberculosis with pneumonia not lot far below recently cancer lins his bean bel an steadily overtaking them and if its it increase continues in ili but a few years scars it ill head the list and the highest authorities give as the rauco of cancer wrong living larkely wrong diet no part of our country is from this rising death rate everywhere communities are losing ofton often their most valuable citizens often too they go before they had lived out half their days no class is exempt ii neither elther the rich nor tho the poor the learned nor tho the ignorant wily why this preventable rising deth rate will t not be of some interest and tuluo to take up tho the vari various health subjects or laws and try to locate approximately where we at ar losing health ground and first what shall be our starting point our basis let us make as our guide this statement learn natures ways and walk therein try to learn what nature intended and then be ba diligent in doing the main subjects that have to do with health are shelter bentila ven tila tion sunlight bun light clothing bathing men continued on oil page elitc six tc n DIET EXERCISE AN n HEALTH continued from page tal condition posture breathing exercise and diet lot let us take up each one more or less briefly I 1 SHELTER 01 our hou houses are hous houss houses s are certainly not less healthful than formerly the loss cannot he be here 2 their VENT ILLATION ran can not bo be less scientific nor be a factor in the loss of health ground 3 SUNLIGHT tho the increase in the city population and in ill factory workers may make here a very small per cc cent nt in the account 4 CLOTHING probably what we gain by common sense we lose by fashion 5 BATHING the increased facilities cili ties would no doubt here register again C MENTAL CONDITION modern methods of living do not conduce to mental poise surely and a small emall per cent must here bo be added to the count 7 POSTURE this thi 3 has been thought of suffice sufficient cL ant importance to 0 o cause the organization of a national posture association of what practical importance it may be is shown by the following description given in the literature of lafe extension institute sti tute in in fit one of the great universities versi ties a young man mail of 31 h had ad just earned promotion to fo the chair of political economy and a brilliant future lay before him then suddenly he broke down he was ordered to colorado and was as one of the first to use outdoor sleeping tents after seven months ho he was pronounced cured but soon found he had not regained pis his strength then he tried california and after two years had not oven the satisfaction of knowing what was wrong determining that it was vas v as better to burn out than rust out he returned to his work though did not expect to last long deciding his diet was nias at fault he investigated and experimented in the light of all the food knowledge ho he could secure at the end of three miserable years he was scarcely better in desperation he resolved to consult a doctor whom lie he had often heard called a but had a remarkable record of repairing human machines he told this ruan man what he had been doing the dr did not think his trouble was mainly one of diet in heavens name what is it then why there is a wi wrinkle inkle in bour our vest what has that got to to do with it there is a wrinkle under the vest and lie he went on to explain that I 1 circulation the great I 1 vein and its system that carries blood between stomach and liver is capable of hoking holt ang practically all the blood in the body when a man holds ho himself erect there is a steady pressure ure of the flat abdominal muscles 1 on these blood vessels which prevents them front from tilling filling up too much but the posture that produces a wrin klo flin fill the vest may result in a tremendous settling of blood in this whole region all your symptoms symptom can lie be explained by the fact that most lost of the blood in your body was down there you cant wonder your brain refused to work when it 11 was as getting hardly any blood supply you should wear car a bold ill give you and there are some exercises which will straighten matters out till you learn how to stand and sit once on more see here doctor suppose I 1 do all you tell me how long ought it to be before I 1 see signs sign s or of improvement oll oh you ought to feel a lot better in ill ton days and in six or eight weeks we eks you should bo be able to do twice as much work as youve been doing the professor expected to show up the humbug but followed instruct ins s tru c lions fully ho he fould little relief relict from the belt but much from the exercises especially front from a bed room rowing machine in ili a single weak he felt literally as if he had been reborn in a month he looked back and he was doing double the work through which he had been painfully dragging and doing it easily ho he declares that since then his capacity for work has steadily increased he has written a book a year besides dozens of articles and monographs he is an active member of a score of learned societies and the moving spirit in a number of public health efforts indeed it is said that most of the important health work in america ceu cen tres in his library he is handling tho ther large and complicated network of interests without any undue wear of the bodily or mental mechanism all because lie he made one neglected adjustment exercised and stood up straight that man was professor irving fisher of yale tale to whom the world today owes so much for his help in teaching the great lesson of right living I 1 have given this at such great length because there is a vory very important lesson the value of posture and especially of proper exercise As a remedy for improper posture macfadden of the physical culture magazine values very highly a simple exercise which he calls vitol vitalizing izing it consists only in drawing the chin directly backward which compels ono one to stand up straight brings the chest forward and encoe encourages L rages proper breathing this has the advantage that it can be used almost any time the constantly increasing number ot of those engaged in sedentary employment and the general tendency to slump make posture a factor to a small per cent on the rising death rate S we take up BREATHING an expert who has made this a study for years and has measured the lung I 1 capacity or of thousands or of people makes the statement that oz only ly one teoman man in fit one hundred and one woman in an five alvo hundred breathes properly this is no doubt too sweeping but one has only to watch his own breathing closely when sitting quietly to bo be convinced that shallow breathing Is almost universal let us briefly notice the mcchan I 1 sw of breathing the bronchial tube dimiat and each part continually subdivides until they end in mail many thousands of air cells the venous blood from all parts of the body is sont sent from the tha right side of the heart through the artery which also continually subdivides i until the air cells are each surrounded by a network of capi cap llanes laries where carbonic acid is thrown out and oxygen is absorbed thus lie he arrangement is such that tho the air goes to all the air colls cell 3 in fit deep lie Ite athing and the blood stream in till ill the capi laries is purified by tho the exchange of and carbonic act aci 1 but in fit shallow breathing thero there iz 13 enough oxygen to purity purify only a part of the blood stream and the balance goes back to the heart as second hand Is it strange that we should feel like second hand people this Is but part of harm continued in ili our next issue |