Nervous Breakdowns and How to Avoid ThemMusgrove, Charles David
Science
Nervous Breakdowns and How to Avoid Them
Musgrove, Charles David
Mental health
When people who have previously neglected exercise start to take it,
they are often met with one difficulty. They complain that after they
have walked for a mile or so they are too tired to go any farther,
and when they return home they do not feel refreshed but rather the
opposite. Under these circumstances we need not hesitate to assure them
that if they will but persevere, this feeling of fatigue will pass off,
and a sense of enjoyment and lightness take its place. Once they have
experienced the truth of this they are ready to continue the daily walk
and exercises, and soon begin to wonder how they ever managed to live
without them.
This acute fatigue is due to the stirring up of the waste matter in the
system. If, however, they force themselves to keep on walking quietly,
the exercise itself will help to eliminate these undesirable elements,
and so fulfil its most important function.
This question of exercise calls for special mention in the case of
women of the middle and upper classes. Too often their exercise for
the day consists in shopping or paying calls, neither of which are
conducive to health. The constantly recurring headaches from which many
women of this type suffer might be cured, along with the observance of
the other rules of health, by the observance of a daily walk and gentle
exercises within their own homes.
[Sidenote: Indoor exercise.]
Indoor exercise is the department in which so many people go wrong. A
young man is convinced of the necessity of keeping himself fit, and the
way in which as a rule he sets about it is to practise with a pair of
heavy dumb-bells before breakfast, or else to buy a developer and use
it, for the purpose of getting his muscles up.
Now Mr. Sandow himself has always been the first to warn people against
the abuse or over-use of the developer, and against practising with
heavy dumb-bells. I was once amazed to hear that great authority say
that he could keep his muscles in perfect condition with two-pound
dumb-bells. Little wonder, therefore, that men of ordinary physique
find themselves, after a quarter of an hour with seven-pound ones,
stale and tired for the remainder of the day.
We have to bear in mind that the most important muscle in the body
is the heart. Cases are not uncommon in which young fellows have
developed their limb-muscles at the expense of this vital organ,
with the result that they have been more or less incapacitated ever
afterwards. It may be very delightful to possess a biceps twice as
large as your neighbour’s, but beyond the gratification of contracting
it for their approval there is nothing to be gained, unless you are
going to be a navvy, that is to say. And that is not likely to be
the case with any of my readers, for navvies are not in the habit of
perusing books on health. They do not need to do so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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