Health Through Will PowerWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Health Through Will Power
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing; Mental health; Will
Over and over again I have seen a great many of the troubles of the
menopause or change of life in women disappear or become ever so much
less bothersome as the result of the formation of regular habits of
walking out of doors every day. Unfortunately, there is a definite
tendency about this time for women to withdraw more and more from
public appearances and to live to a considerable extent in retirement
at home. Nothing could be much worse for them. They need, above all,
to get out and to have a number of interests, and if these interests
can only be so arranged as to demand rather prolonged walks, so much
the better. This is more particularly true for the unmarried woman who
is going through this critical time, and the question of walking
regularly every day for three or four miles must be proposed to her.
It will require a considerable effort of the will. More than two miles
at the beginning will probably be too tiring, but the amount can be
gradually increased {146} until at least four miles on the average is
covered every day. Above all, for the feelings of discomfort in the
cardiac region so often noticed at this time, regular walking is the
best remedy in most cases, always of course presupposing that there is
no organic heart condition, for in that case only a physician can give
the proper direction for each case. By the exercise of the lungs that
it requires, it will probably save most people from colds and coughs
which they have had to endure every winter. Lastly be it said that
practically all men and women, though more particularly the men who
have lived well beyond the Psalmist's limit of threescore and ten,
have been regular daily walkers, or else they have taken exercise in
some form in the open air which is the equivalent of walking. One of
the most distinguished of English physicians, Sir Hermann Weber, who
died just after the end of the war in London, was in his ninety-fifth
year. He had practised medicine regularly until the age of eighty and
continued in excellent health and vigor until just before his death.
During the last year of life, he contributed an interesting article to
the _British Medical Journal_ on the "Influence of Muscular Exercise
on Longevity." He attributed his vigor at the age of {147} ninety-five
as well as the prolongation of his life to his practice of spending
every day two or three hours in the open air. He walked, as a rule,
forty to fifty miles a week. Even in the most inclement weather he
rarely did less than thirty miles a week. Many another octogenarian
and nonagenarian has attributed his good health and long life to the
habit of regular daily exercise in the open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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