One thing that our middle-aged men, and in fact many
of us who have not yet reached that way mark, have
entirely forgotten is that Nature is very chary of
her favors. Our primal mother is just and kind,
but she has little use 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.
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.”
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.
