EAT LESS, DRINK LESS, KEEP FIT.

North Otago Times, Volume CVII, Issue 17748, 12 March 1927, Page 2

EAT LESS, DRINK LESS, KEEP FIT.

OUTDOOR EXERCISE MEANS HAPPY LIFE. Athletes the world over have discovered a vital secret during the past year or two. It is that moderatioh in eating and drinking rather than continual training, brings true physical fitness. Modern man eats less, drinks iess, and- wears fewer clothes than his ancestors, and in conseq.uence, he lives longer and is less frequently vexed by disease while he lives. Not only so, but he is a stranger to many of the diseases with which his ancestors were all too f amiliar ; for example, gout and alcoholic cirrhosis. These two diseases arp certainiy on the wane — so much so that young medical men know of them chiefly by tradition, says the London "Times." The picture of increasing national health includes the influence of outdoor exerci'se, the enthusiasm for which, among all classes. has marched side by side with the desire to practise temperance. If, for instance, the gradual disappearance of gout is to be ascribed to the love of frugality, and the gradual disappearance of the once notorious "gin-drinker's liver," to abstinenc'e from ardent spirits, the quite sudden disappearance of anaemia among young girls may properly be ascribed to ne\V and better methods of recreation. Abstinence and exercise, again, are complementary to one another and proceed from a common impulse — Ihe desire to live grandly. This desire is the basis of the romantic temperament, which, again, finds its sanctions in enthusiasm and faith. It is possible, then, to follow the clue given by the diminution in frequency of qertain ailments to an impulse every where active at present in human society, and it is certainiy permissible to set the facts thus ascertained against pessimistic ideas. There was a moment, just .after the end of the Great War, when it was openly asserted that the conception of "progress" which had animated the whole nineteenth century must be abandoned as fallacious. But here, in the diminishing returns of the "selfish diseases," is direct refutation of that assertion. Progress in frugality and in hardihood of body is certainiy the best and most fruitful of all progress, since it indicates progress in the conception of happiness and in the determination to realise that conception. It is the progress of the individual man and woman as against the mere progress of the State. It is not surprising that it should have been accompanied by a very definite quickening in every rank of society of the fmpulses of kindness and generosity.