There are two facts [1]:
1. By virtue of the body's inherent and automatic powers of self-renewal, self- renovation and self-regeneration and its undeviating tendency to fullness of life, it is capable of a much longer existence and a much higher existence than men and women now live.
2. Disease, degeneracy and death come as the immediate result of poisoning and starvation of the cells of the body as a consequence of a combination of forces and influences which are largely under individual control and usually self-inflicted.
These facts serve to confirm the old statement that "man does not die; he kills himself". Men and women are dying far short of the age they are capable of attaining because they are engaged in committing slow suicide. What should you do, if you would live to the fullest?
If you have ever watched a seed sprout and grow and then watched the tiny plant develop into a mature plant, you will be able to fully appreciate the simplicity of Nature's requirements and the abundance of her provisions for living.
All that the seed requires in order to grow into a vigorous well developed specimen of its kind is proper soil (food), warmth, air, water, and sunshine. Given these simple conditions and it fulfills perfectly all the funcions of its life. Deprived of any of them, and it sickens and dies.
The minute germ in the egg, if it is to mature and become a full grown, well developed bird, requires these same simple conditions plus exercise (movement) after it has hatched. Deprived of any of these and it sickens and dies.
Puppies, kittens, calves, young whales, lions, etc., all ask for but these same natural elements of life. The human infant, likewise, require these only, if it is to grow into a healthy, well developed human being.
In all these cases, beginning with the plant and bird and ascending up to man, freedom from violence must be added to our list of requirements. It should be observed, also, that where any element is not wholly lacking, but is deficient, we have defective development, lowered resistance to disease, impaired function and shortened life. Let us make one final addition - CLEANLINESS. This means, simply, freedom from poisonous filth.
Given a normal organism at birth and proper living conditions as summarized above, together with absence from injurious influences, and every baby born into this world will grow into a strong, healthy man or woman. But, observe, those same simple conditions that are the sources of the development of plant, animal and men from germ to maturity are the constant sources of the maintenance of these organisms after maturity is reached. Those same influences that impair or prevent development in the growing child or young also impair the powers of life in adults.
Whether you have a good organism at birth will depend partly upon heredity and partly upon the nutrition you received from your mother during pregnancy. What that organism will become after birth, that is, whether it will reach up to its highest potentiality, or fall far short of its inherent possibilities, will depend upon how you live. Of course there will be social factors that are not subject to individual control that may mar your life to a certain extent, but for the most part you and your parents and teachers will determine your life.
You cannot change your heredity. You cannot change your past. You cannot make society over. But you can work for the betterment of these things for the future. Civilization has many influences in it that are inimical to health and life. But these are not inherent in civilization and can be eradicated. We can build for a better future and assure our children and grandchildren better conditions to grow up under. The standard of living can be raised; the conditions of life can be improved; not merely for the fortunate few; but for all.
How, then, shall we live?
1. Cultivate poise and cheer. Do not attempt to see the world through the rose-colored glasses of a sentimental Pollyana, but learn to take joy and sorrow, good fortune, and misfortune with the same calmness and equitableness. Avoid worry, fear, anxiety, excitement, jealousy, anger, self-pity, etc.
2. Exercise daily. Daily physical exercise, preferably in the fresh air and sunshine, and, as often as possible, in the form of play, is essential to both mental and physical health. Avoid the strenuous life, however. Do not make the Rooseveltian mistake, and imagine that a strenuous physical life can offset gluttony.
3. Secure plenty of rest and sleep each day. Learn to retire early. Learn to relax and "let go". Earn your sleep by honest work, and avoid stimulants, and sleep will come easily and naturally. Do not turn the night into day (using electric light). Time is never wasted that is spent in recuperation.
4. Keep Clean. This may refer to both mind and body. Do not indulge in frequent and prolonged bathing. Man is not a fish. Where time and work permit, a daily friction bath will keep the body clean without the use of water and that abomination of desolation, soap. If water bathing is indulged in, the water should be near the temperature of the body and you should remain in it only as long as is necessary to wash your body. Follow this with a briskrub over the whole body. Keep clean clothes, clean beds, clean houses, clean sorroundings. Keep the mind clean. Avoid lustful thoughts and desires. Do not become covetous, deceitful or corrupt. Nature penalizes you for all these things with hardening of the arteries and a shortened life.
5. Breathe fresh, pure air. Keep your windows open. Have your living room, bed room, office or work shop well ventilated. Ger out doors as much as you can. If you live in the city, take advantage of every opportunity to get out into the country.
6. Get as much sunshine as possible. This does not mean that you are merely to sit by the window, or that a walk in the sunshine heavily clad in dark clothes will be of great benefit to you. Your body needs sunshine just as it needs food and water. The direct and unfiltered rays of the sun should come in contact with your skin. Sun baths are best taken in the morning or evening when it is not so hot. They should be begun in infancy. In infancy childhood and youth more sunshine is needes than in adult life.
7. Eat moderately of wholesome foods. What are wholesome foods? All foods that are fresh and that have not been processed and adulterated are wholesome foods. All foods that in the process of refining, manufacturing, pickling, canning, cooking, etc., have been deprived of more or less of their mineral elements and vitamine content or that have been adulterated and poisoned by bleaching, coloring, flavoring and preservatives are more or less unwholesome. All foods that have been raised in defective soil or in hot houses, or on manure fed lands, or lands fed on packing house fertilizers, or that are raised out of the sunlignt, are more or less unwholesome. All foods that have begun to undergo decomposition are unwholesome. Avoid all such foods.
The diet should be composed largely of fruits and green leafy vegetables. Proteins, starches and fats should be eaten moderately. Eggs, cheese, meat and cereals, if eaten, should be eaten in great moderation.
The morning meal should be a fruit meal. No sugar should be addes to fruit. Fruit is best eaten raw.
The noon meal should be light.
The evening meal should be the heavy meal of the day and should always be begun with a large raw vegetable salad.
No fried food should ever be eaten.
The diet should be largely, if not wholly, raw.
After maturity is reached three protein meals per week are enough. Only one protein food should be taken at a meal. No starches or sweet foods should be eaten with the protein. Either acid fruits or a raw vegetable salad and cooked non-starchy vegetables should be eaten with these. Milk should never be eaten with proteins.
Starch may be taken four times per week. It should not be eaten with proteins nor with acid fruits. Take it with a raw salad and cooked non-starchy vegetables. Never put sugar, honey, jam, jelly, etc., on starch foods before eating them. Eat them plain. Take them dry and chew them well.
Eat only when hungry. If not hungry at meal time, miss the meal. If you cannot relish your food wait until you can, before eating.
If in pain, fever, inflammation, or mental and physical discomfort do not eat. If discomfort follows a meal, miss the next one. If in fear,worry, anxiety, grief, anger, etc., wait until these have passed before eating.
Do not eat between meals nor in the evening before retiring. You can eat more than you require by eating three meals per day.
Chew your food well. Taste it fully before swallowing. Digestion depends upon taste.
Do not drink with meals nor for four hours thereafter. Fifteen minutes before meals and four hours after meals drink all the water called for by thirst. If not thirsty don't drink. Don't try to drink six or eight glasses of water per day because someone told you you need them. Thirst will tell you when you need water.
Do not eat when tired. Rest a bit before eating. Do not eat a heavy meal immediately before nor immediately after hard mental or physical work.
Be moderate. Eat sensibly.
8. Have an interest in life. A purposeless life is marked for early dissolution. A purposeless life is not worthy of preservation. That man or woman who has no purpose in life is driven about from place to place; from discontent to despair.
9. Get married. Build a home. Rear a family. Statistics show that married people live longer on the average than single people.
Dr. George Robertson of the Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians recently stated that "young men between 25 and 35 who ramain bachelors die four years sooner than married men". He added that they also "run three times the risk of becoming insane". It is, of course, not fair to charge all this apparent evil of "single blessedness" to the single life. We can only correctly interpret such figures when we understand why these men remained single. All normal, healthy men marry, or, at least, desire to. It is safe to assume that a great majority of those who remain single from choice are lacking in virility and are diseased perhaps in many ways. The thing that prevented them from marrying may also have been the things that caused them early death or that caused so much insanity among them.
Childless couples die before those with children. A childless marriage is usually more unhappy than where there are children. Home and children stabilize life.
Avoid contraceptives of all kinds. They are all harmful and all lead to sex gluttony. They are partly responsible for so much cancer of the womb in women. Don't build your married life on lust.
10. Avoid all poison habits - coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, tabacco, alcohol, opium, heroin, soda fountain slops and other drugs. These all waken, poison and destroy the body.
11. Avoid over clothing. Overclothing weakens the body. It lowers resistance to heat and cold and impairs the powers of adaption to weather changes. It deprives the body of sun and air and keeps the excretions of the skin locked up against the body. You are literally wallowing in your own excretions.
12. Avoid sexual excesses. All sexual relations - "petting", mental self-abuse, self-abuse and all indulgences - drain the nervous system of much of its powers. Conserve these powers.
13. Avoid all excesses. Build your life on the conservation of energy not upon its dissipation. Don't waste your forces in useless and needless expenditures. Be moderate and temperate in all things. If you waste your forces you impair your functions and build toxemia and impaired nutrition.
Do not become one-sided in your manner of living. You cannot become well and strong through exercise alone, or through diet alone, or rest and sleep alone. Fresh air and sunshine alone are not enough. Do not imagine that by breathing alone you can reach the heights. All these things are good, but life is more than exercise, or food and drink; more than thought, or rest and sleep. It is all these and more. Life must be lived as a whole.
Do not get the idea that you are an exception to the laws of life. There are no exceptions. The laws that govern life, health, growth development, disease and death in your body are the same laws that govern these same processes in the bodies of your neighbors. Physiological laws and processes are the same in Jones as in Smith. Both Jones and his neighbors are injured by the same harmful indulgences, practices, habits, agents and influences. Both are helped by the same factors. You are no exception.
We must learn to view life as a struggle between sef-control and self-indulgence and must como to realize that self-control alone leads to strenght and happiness. Self-indulgence leads to misery and destruction. Someone said: "The rewards of life are for service, its penalties for self-indulgence".
There is absolutely no need for any action or habit that impairs life and produces weakness and disease. But people are so enslaved by their habits, so bent on the pleasures of the moment, so lacking in self-control that they cannot free themselves. Self-control is the world's greatest need. Self-discipline isthe only saving force. Our pleasure-mad and overstimulated age is almost wholly lacking in self- control.
Many will say: "I would rather live as I now do and only live ten years than to live as you have outlined and live a hundred". They do not realize that this isthe despairing cry of a slave. These people are hopelessly enslaved by their bad habits and thoroughly perverted in both mind and body. Mind and body alike are dominated by their habits. They are beyond redemption. They will declare they derive more satisfaction from their pipe or cigar than from anything else in life. Or they cry out, "Please don't take my harem away". It is a waste of time to reason with such. One is always defeated in an argument with their appetites and morbid desires and perverted instincts.
Their cry is "We live but once. Let us enjoy life while we are here". We believe in enjoying life, real life, life in the highest and fullest sense, not life on the low groveling plane they mean. What they should say is "We live but once, let us make it short and snappy".
If these people would only die at the end of their ten fast and merry years, litlle objection could be offered to their foolish "philosophy" amd worse practices. But many of them do not do this. Instead, they hang on year after year, going from doctor to doctor and form institution to institution in search of a cure for the effects of the very abuses of their bodies from which they think they derive so much pleasure and satisfaction. They desire to be SAVED IN THEIR SINS, not FROM THEM. The "satisfaction" they derive from their pipe, or their gluttony, or their alcohol or from their harem is a poor satisfaction. It is a poor substitute for the higher joys of real health based on wholesome living.
If you would live longer; live simply, live wholesomely, live right.
Reference:
[1] Herbert M. Shelton, Living Life to Live it Longer, 1926. Republished 1962 by Health Research Mokelumne Hill, California.
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