FAT OR THIN.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 January 1920, Page 4

FAT OR THIN.

WHO’LL LIVE THE LONGER?

NEW YORK CITY. Life Extension is the really up-to-date idea in New York to-day. Some time ago a young Englishman —is is surprising how many Englishmen are behind big schemes here—went to the insurance companies with a new proposal. He pointed out that it was to their definite financial advantage to help their subscribers to lengthen their lives, for the longer the insured lived the more the companies benefited.

The insurance officials saw the reasonableness of the idea, and the Life Extension Institute was formed, with ex-Preeident Taft as its chairman, a hun dred leading scientific men on its reference board, and a staff of over 5,000 examining physicians . The institute does not claim to be a philanthropic organisation, but it can hardly be called money-making, for its fees are only 75 dollars, £3 a year. It gives no medical treatment, but it tells you the truth about yourself. When you become a member you are first put through a searching and intensive physical examination by one of the institute’s doctors. Your ancestry, your past record, and your present condition are minutely dissected. Your blood pressure, lungs, heart, brain and skin, your , ducts and glands and lymphatic system are brought under survey. Your blood is examined, if necessary, misery scopically and chemically. You are X-rayed. You feel at the end of the examination that you have almost been turned inside out.

And then—here comes the vital feature of the plan—you are told the whole truth about yourself. You are given first a preliminary report, and then a full and minute record. If there is 'anything wrong with you, you are told frankly what it is. Your physical condition is graded. You are sent to your own doctor or a specialist, if necessary, and you are given detailed personal advice on your mode of living, the correction of your food habits and the like. WHAT THEY DO FOR YOU, Once a quarter, certain chemical examinations are underta ken for you. These are compared with the results of previous) examinations, arid at. the first signs of anything abnormal you are reexamined. The institute acts as youi general health guide and keeps in touch with you all the time. If there is an epidemic you receive personal advice how to avoid it. If a hot spell is sweeping over your city, you will find among your morning letters a series of hints ns to a hat you had better do in order to feel the least inconvenience from the heat. “I cannot find anything much the matter with you,” said the doctor after he had completed my examination. This is what the doctors have to tell most people. Rut if most men aie oiganically sound it is equally true that most of us living in cities arc growing old before our time. A man of forty, for instance, has on the average only half the vital resistance of twenty. We live in such a way that we are unduly liable to all kinds of infections, from colds to enteric,

It has been estimated that in the United States over 000,000 people die each year from preventable disease, that half the cases of sickness could be avoided, that the financial loss from earnings cut off by preventable disease and premature death amounts to £300,000,000 a year, and that the aver* age man lives Id years less than he might do by rational observance of health laws. THE FAT MAN OF 50.

! Two of the common difficulties which 1 th institute finds among average men ! are posture and weight. Most of us i living in cities slouch more or less. The j first thing we have to do is to learn to : stand erect.

Large numbers of people, particularly men in middle life, weigh more than they ought to weigh. People scarcely realise that over-weight definitely lowers the chance of long life. Under "30 years of age weight does not matter. It is rather a good thing than otherwise, if not to great excess. But over 30 it has to be watched. The man of 50 who is 101 b over the average weight for his height loses 6 per cent in ibis chance for long life; while the man who is 301 b over the average weight is 21 per cent down. “A lean horse for a long race” is a motto justified by life insurance experience.

The one thing that the institute tries not to do is to encourage people to think too much about themselves or their health. In its literature it drives home the one idea that it is your business to keep yourself healthy as a matter of course, but not to be for ever dissecting your condition. Find out if you are all right or not. Find out the best way of keeping yourself in the top of condition and then forget yourself. The valetudinarian is the most ■miserable of all men.