Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

EXERCISES MAKE NEW BLOOD

Exercise has another most important task in supplying an adequate amount of blood to the bones of the body, in order that these bones may carry on their work of manufacturing fresh blood for the use of the body. Unless these bones are bathed with the already existing blood of the body, which carries to them oxygen and nourishment, the process of manufacturing new blood, which goes on within the marrow of the bones, would quickly cease. It has been demonstrated by science that muscular activity increases the blood flow through the muscles as many as six times.

Here, then, lies perhaps the first hope for supplying new blood to any body which has begun to deteriorate through the accumulation of poisons emanating from the large intestine, or from the other organs. Exercise will supply the blood-producing bone marrow with six times as much raw material to make new blood as a sedentary mode of life would produce, and at the same time this six-times-strengthened flood will wash out of the crevices of the bones and muscles and fibres the stored up poisons. For these purposes, the exercises which move the large muscle masses are the most helpful. Dr. Benton A. Colver, of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, to whom we are indebted for assistance in preparing this chapter, names the following exercises as being beneficial for this purpose:

Low knee bending, stretching and heel sinking, and heel raising; lying on the floor with the weight supported by toes and hands, and lowering and raising the body; raising the body by the arms, holding to a bar above the head; walking with a vigorous stride, and running and swimming.

Of all these exercises, swimming is theoretically the best, for the reason that it exercises equally all the muscle masses in the body, and requires the best balanced of all movements. Walking and running come next in the order of excellence, simply for the reason that they can be carried on best in the open air and without the bother that may accompany the performance of more formal exercises.