Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)

by Rasmus Larssen Alsaker

When people have reached physical maturity they should begin to reduce their food intake. There is no need for building material then. All that is necessary is enough to repair the waste and to keep up the temperature. The individual at twenty-seven should eat a little less than when he was twenty and by the age of thirty-five he should have reduced his food still more and made his meals very simple. Children enjoy the gratification of the sense of taste, but at the age of thirty-five a man has lived enough and experienced enough so that he should know that the overgratification of appetites is an evanescent and unprofitable pleasure, always costing more than it is worth. It is best to grow into good habits while young, for it is difficult to do so after one has grown old. The man who reforms after fifty is the exception.

Children are fond of cereal foods and sugars. They can eat these foods two or three times a day and thrive. A man of thirty-five should make it a general rule to limit his starch eating to once a day. Various physiologists say that as much as sixteen ounces of dry starch (equivalent to about thirty ounces of ordinary bread) are necessary each day. This is entirely too much. Very few people can profitably eat more than four ounces of dry starch a day, and for many this is too much. Through eating as much as is popularly and professionally advocated, early decay and death result.

The arteries are normally pliable and elastic. When too much food is taken, the system is unable to cleanse itself. Debris is left at various points. One of the favorite lodging places is in the coats of the arteries. After considerable deposits have been formed the arteries lose their elasticity. They become hard and unyielding. A normal radial artery can easily be compressed with one finger. Sometimes the radial artery becomes so hard that it is difficult to compress it with three fingers. As the arteries grow harder they become more brittle and sometimes they break, often a fatal accident.

This hardness of the arteries impedes the circulation, for the tone and natural elasticity of the vessel walls is one of the aids to a normal circulation.

So long as the arteries are normal all parts of the body are bathed in a constantly changing stream of blood. The muscles, the nerves, the bones, in fact all parts of the body, remove from the blood stream those elements that are necessary for repairing or building the various tissues. They also throw into the blood stream the refuse and waste due to the constant repair and combustion going on all over the body. The blood then leaves this refuse with the skin, lungs, kidneys and bowels, which throw it out of the body.

So long as there are enough fuel and food, but not too much, and so long as all the debris is carried away, there is health. But let this process be thrown out of balance and there will be disease. The food intake is seldom too small, though the digestion is frequently so poor that not enough good food gets into the blood. Old age is largely due to overeating and eating the wrong kinds of food. This is how overeating causes premature aging, when it does not kill more quickly: When too much food is taken, too much is absorbed into the blood, provided the nutritive processes are active. Then all the food in the blood can not be used for repair and fuel. The balance must either be excreted or stored away in the body as deposits. If this storing takes place in the joints, the result may be rheumatism or gout and at times even a complete locking of the joints (anchylosis). If it is stored in the walls of the blood-vessels they become hard and unyielding. No matter where deposits take place, some of them will be found in the walls of the blood-vessels. When these vessels grow hard they decrease in caliber. The result is that the heart is compelled to work very hard, but even then enough blood is not forced through the vessels. The circulation becomes sluggish. The blood in the various parts becomes stagnant.

Then insufficient good oxygen and first-class nourishment are brought to the parts and not enough waste is carried away. Now the billions of cells of which the body is composed are constantly bathed in poisonous blood. The result is lowering of physical tone, or degeneration, of the whole body. The hands and the feet suffer most at first from the poor blood supply and become cold easily. Those who suffer constantly from cold hands and feet should know that they are aging, although they may be but twenty years old.

Such a condition as this often gives rise to varicose veins in the legs. The feet are so far away from the heart, and it is such a long upgrade return of the blood, that the circulation in the lower extremities easily becomes sluggish. The flabby, relaxed tissues and the hardened blood-vessels allow the blood to stagnate. This is why senile gangrene is so common in the feet and so often fatal.

The brain gets a copious blood supply, yet the hardening of the arteries often deprives this organ of its necessary nourishment. Then the higher faculties begin to abdicate. If the hardening is extensive senile softening of the brain may take place. This is always due to a lack of pure blood. Sometimes the arteries are brittle enough to break. Baldness is another symptom of physical decay. The hair follicles are not properly nourished, for the arteries have become so contracted and the tissues of the scalp so hardened that there is not enough blood to feed the hair roots. Baldness begins on top of the head, generally the only part affected, because it is farthest away from the blood supply. Baldness is also partly due to man's headwear. Women are rarely bald. There is a saying that there are no bald men in the poorhouse. Even if this were true, it would not be very consoling, for the bald heads on the street cleaning forces are numerous.

Overeating also causes premature aging because if results in fermentation in the alimentary tract. The acids produced cause degeneration of various tissues, having an especially bad effect on the nervous system, which reflects the evil to other parts of the body.