Still another change is continually taking place;
as the man goes on in life, little by little the control
of his muscles leaves him. Instead of running
about as does the youth, recklessly and with never
a thought of being tired, he begins to favor himself
by walking in the easiest possible way, until soon
he is balancing on one foot and then tilting forward
on the other, making no muscular effort and preferring
the motor-car or the trolley whenever it is at hand.
As an inevitable result, some of the muscles atrophy,
and even those that do not deteriorate speedily discover
that they have no master, and they act when and how
they please.
The man who is continually giving orders to subordinates
and having other men do things for him, soon finds
that he is unable to accomplish things for himself;
then, if he is thrown on his own resources, he is
helpless. Take a group of men, executives, who
for a dozen years have been ordering other men about
instead of obeying orders, and you will find that
for the most part these captains of industry have lost
50 per cent. of their muscular control. On the
other hand, the man who is taking orders retains command
over all his muscles, for he is daily and hourly training
them to instant obedience. A group of privates
will snap into “attention” at the word
of command with splendid muscular control; the same
number of officers would find great difficulty in doing
this. Now as the man loses muscular control he
loses poise and carriage. His head rolls about
in a slack way on his neck, and has a tendency to drop
forward; the muscles of the neck and the upper part
of the back grow soft from lack of use and control
and he begins to become round-shouldered; his chest
falls in as the shoulders come forward and the chest
cavity is reduced. This means a gradual cramping
of lungs, heart, and stomach.
By way of compensation he lets out a hole or two in
his belt and starts in to carry more weight there.
In other words, he exchanges muscle for fat, and as
the fat increases he has less and less muscular strength
to carry it. It is as though in a motor-car one
added hundreds of pounds of weight to the body and
reduced the horse-power of the engine. Pretty
soon the man becomes so heavy around the waist that
he notices his discomfort, and it produces exhaustion;
now he becomes more and more averse to exercise, and
the facia, or fat, having the better of the battle,
begins to penetrate even the fiber of the muscles.
THE REMEDY
The heart is a muscle, like all the others in the
body, and fat may accumulate there. When this
condition comes about the man is perforce obliged
to be careful, for the heart muscle has lost its strength.
As stated, the situation becomes a vicious circle:
as the man adds fat he becomes more and more averse
to exercise, and the less he exercises the fatter
he gets. And yet all this can be prevented; nor
is it necessary to take up any violent system of training,
or to engage in tremendous gymnastic exercise.
If the patient is willing to take reasonable physical
training along scientific lines, a few hours a week
will keep him in respectable shape, so that he may
preserve not only his figure, but also his activity.
