Your Body At Its Best Ch 8

In three days I began to feel improvement, and hardly a week had passed before I was my old self once again. My body had regained its accustomed vigor and, incredibly, in one short week my entire attitude toward my work and life in general had changed completely. My optimistic attitude returned and rekindled my ambition, and once more life had purpose and meaning.

That lesson on the vital importance of health to success and happiness I shall never forget. To this day - at the age of sixty-five - I have followed quite faithfully the schedule which my doctor ordered me to follow during those difficult days in 1932. That this faithful daily attention to physical fitness has paid off in a big way is something I can vouch for unequivocally. My doctor tells me I am in excellent condition. My heart is strong, and my blood pressure normal. I feel fine. I'm successful in my work. I'm in good spirits. And as a natural consequence I welcome each new day with happy expectancy.

Of course, the real culprit in the matter of body-fitness is our push-button way of life - we sit most of the day, do little that is more strenuous than answering the telephone or walking to the nearest restaurant for lunch, ride to and from work, eat three meals a day, drink fattening cocktails before dinner, slump in deep chairs to watch television, or play bridge, have evening snacks, grow fatter and fatter, and slowly but surely stagnate and degenerate.

It takes a lot of will power and self-discipline to overcome the bad habits of this soft, degenerating way of life. But the reward is great.   That self-discipline in health habits pays off in better health, greater happiness, and longer life, has been forcefully proved in the case of former President Dwight David Eisenhower.

In the April 1960 issue of Today's Health, a publication of The American Medical Association, Ernest L. Bar-cella, Washington bureau manager of United Press International, wrote that "President Eisenhower is today in better physical condition than when he took office, despite his age (71 in October 1961), and the three major illnesses he has suffered." Mr. Eisenhower's amazing recovery from a heart attack, ileitis, and a small stroke is, writes Mr. Barcella, "one for the medical books - a living legend of remarkable physical comebacks, of astonishing stamina and energy reserve.

"By all medical odds," wrote Mr. Barcella, "the President long since should have put on his slippers, retired to a rocking-chair, and called it a career. Instead he has undertaken a staggering load of work and travel."

"Discipline," said Mr. Barcella, "very likely saved his life; discipline in his health habits - diet, rest, emotions, exercise, work, temperance."
Proper exercise, diet, rest, and bodily care will put you in good physical shape, give you a better-looking and better-functioning body, and best of all it will bring you a grand feeling of well-being, physically,  mentally,  and spiritually, and thus add immeasurably to your success and happiness.

The first step, then, in your pursuit of success and happiness is to build a sound and healthy body, and henceforth to protect it as a most precious treasure, for that is really what it is.

• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 1
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 2
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 3
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 4
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 5
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 6
• Your Body At It's Best - Ch 7