Hospitals are no fun for patients who are in middle age or older. Their bones are brittle. They have not stood up to strenuous physical activity.
A broken bone is often a tragedy. Heart, lungs and circulation may not adequately meet the effects of the injury.
The secret of good health and longevity is that younger you are, the more you should indulge in physical exercise. Your body needs it for elasticity and strength.
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Avoid depreciation of your own organism. Have more walks than motor or scooter rides in the city; more strolls go a long way in pepping up spirits. More sports participation than mere sports watching is a tonic.
If your job gives you a little chance for a walk, cultivate a hobby or pastime that will tone up your body by providing an opportunity for regular exercise.
I can quote numerous instances of university teachers living on the campus, coming to the department on a car or scooter though their home is a few minutes walk away. It is difficult to believe that such “mobility” is conducive to health.
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A distraught R.K.M. consults a doctor for insomnia. After going to bed at 10 PM or later, he wakes up at 4 AM and cannot sleep again. His doctor assures him that an eight hour-sleep is not absolutely necessary. In fact, too much sleep at this stage of life is in itself exhausting.
On the other hand, the energy spent in the teens and twenties often calls for more sleep for health. The pattern of the younger years has to change in mid-age to avoid unnecessary crisis.
A young man has maddening desires and consuming ambitions. He strives to turn these into challenges and embarks on adventurous projects sometimes foolish. Braking such emotions and impulses may cause physical and mental exhaustion. Pent up emotions result in illness.
Psycho-somatic is based on this principle. In mid-life, feverish pace causes sudden or unexpected decline in health. Circulatory system, heart, and other vital organs may not be able to take protracted excitement any longer, and may falter.
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Mind and body ‘enjoy’ the aging process if you relish the fruits of mid years, subdued passion and receding tides of stormy seas. Add springiness to your age and scale down your activities, not in despair but slowly and pleasantly Mid-age is not old age. It only opens its portals.
Keep weight normal. An obese person is burdened with this extra baggage in the form of body fat, which he must lug around with every step he takes. Even lying down, an overweight person’s heart is strained. His energy is sapped Overweight almost always results from overeating. Eating and dieting under medical supervision helps. Avoid self- doctoring.
However, cases have shown that once a person faces that he must go hungry for a while for the good of his health, dieting can be a pleasurable experience. The golden principle is: leave the dining table when your stomach is half full.
If you diet to stay fashionably slim, you also may be affecting your health. You may look more fashionable but this does not mean you become more attractive also. You look underweight, tense, tired and a physical wreck.
Undue fear and anxiety about health can make it worse. A person who takes his condition and illnesses in stride, does not fret unreasonably, and lets the doctor do the worrying, feels better and reduces complications.
Emotional upheavals cause disorders more often than they cause mental ones. Interviews with patients struck by heart, gall bladder, stomach and kidneys have revealed that many came down with the illness shortly after they had an emotional crisis.
This condition usually comes as a result of the death of a friend or relative. It can also be the loss of a job or of possessions. When this happens, it is time to take the greatest precautions for guarding your health. After a personal tragedy, do not try to go on as before. Give yourself a chance to recover.
It is now known that, in matters of health, body and mind they work in unison. Let worries not take their toll on you. Why pay advance tax on your weak emotional resources?
The rigid, inflexible life, however, stifles elasticity, making mind capable of withstanding stress, strain, or illness. Good health is not merely the absence of illness but how adaptable the body is, how well it can overcome illness.
However, a constant disorder, feverish pace unpunctuated with spells of relaxation, are enemies of good health. Frantic routine often leads to taking a tranquilizer, which is neither a cure nor a remedy.