Keeping Fit All the Way | Page 2

for the man who neglects her laws. When a man earns his
bread by the sweat of his brow she maintains him in good physical
condition. When he rides in a motor-car instead of walking she
atrophies the muscles of his legs, hangs a weight of fat around his
middle, and labels him "out of the running." If he persists in eating and
not physically exerting himself, she finally concludes that he is
cumbering the earth, and she takes him off with Bright's or diabetes. It
does not do him any good to tell her that he was too busy to walk and
so had to ride, or that he had no time for exercising; she simply pushes
him off to make way for a better man.
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
Nature has given man two ways (outside of the action of the bowels) of
getting rid of impurities, one by means of the skin and the other by
means of the kidneys. It is like a motor-car with two cylinders. If one
stops the other will run on for a time, but its wear is increased. When a
man stops exercising and ceases to carry off by means of his skin some
of these impurities, he throws an additional load on his kidneys. When
a man goes without exercise and begins to accumulate fat, that fat
gradually deposits itself and not alone about the waist; it invades the
muscular tissue all over his body even to his heart. As this
accumulation grows there come with it a muscular slackness and a
disinclination to exercise. The man is carrying greater weight and with
less muscular strength to do it. No wonder that when he tries to
exercise he gets tired. He is out of condition. Hence he begins to
revolve in a vicious circle. He knows that he needs exercise to help take
off the fat, but exercise tires him so much, on account of the fat, that he
becomes exhausted; usually he gives it up and lets himself drift again.
As his abdomen becomes more pendulous his legs grow less active. As
his energy wanes his carriage becomes more slack. He shambles along
as best he can, if he is positively obliged to walk. His feet trouble him.
Altogether he is only comfortable when riding. When he has reached
this state the insurance companies regard him as a poor risk, and
instead of enjoying the allotted threescore and ten years of real life he
falls short by a decade; and even then the last ten years are but "labor
and sorrow."

AS THE YEARS GO ON
The first thing that a man begins to lose through the inroads of age is
his resistive power. He may seem in perfect health so long as there is
no special change of conditions, but when he is placed in a position
where he needs his resistive forces to throw off disease, he finds that he
cannot command them.
Still another change is continually taking place; as the man goes on in
life, little by little the control of his muscles leaves him. Instead of
running about as does the youth, recklessly and with never a thought of
being tired, he begins to favor himself by walking in the easiest
possible way, until soon he is balancing on one foot and then tilting
forward on the other, making no muscular effort and preferring the
motor-car or the trolley whenever it is at hand. As an inevitable result,
some of the muscles atrophy, and even those that do not deteriorate
speedily discover that they have no master, and they act when and how
they please.
The man who is continually giving orders to subordinates and having
other men do things for him, soon finds that he is unable to accomplish
things for himself; then, if he is thrown on his own resources, he is
helpless. Take a group of men, executives, who for a dozen years have
been ordering other men about instead of obeying orders, and you will
find that for the most part these captains of industry have lost 50 per
cent. of their muscular control. On the other hand, the man who is
taking orders retains command over all his muscles, for he is daily and
hourly training them to instant obedience. A group of privates will snap
into "attention" at the word of command with splendid muscular
control; the same number of officers would find great difficulty in
doing this. Now as the man loses muscular control he loses poise and
carriage. His head rolls about in a slack way on his neck, and has a
tendency to drop forward; the muscles of the neck and the upper part of
the back grow soft from lack of use and control and he