YOUR BODY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 51, 22 October 1931, Page 5

YOUR BODY

KEEP FIT AND HEALTHY AND SUMMER HEAT LOSES EFFECT. Knowledge of your body- and its needs means health. Once you have acquired this knowledge, then you should be able to put your body into such a state of health that it becomes your unconscious servant, instead of your master. Your body should be subjugated to the development of your mind. Unless you can be entirely unconscious of it, it intrudes intself into your mental outlook — and prevents 100 per cent. efficiency. Inaetivity in hot weather does not make for coolness. It is just as necessary for us to exercise our bodies in the summer to keep them cool as it is to exercise them in winter to keep them warm. The human body which is over-fed and over-clothed in summer reminds me very much of oue of those old- 1 fashioned steam threshing machines — so hot inside that it is a good place for sinners to become accustomed to what is awaitihg them. It is hot around that engine because a man is shovelling coal inside it while King Sol is pouring down heat outside it. The object of firing the engine is not to create warmth so much as to create energy, but when one is perpetually piling on coal, one has to have the heat with the energy. The outside heat of the weather would not alone make us feel so hot in summer were we not within ourselves generating more heat than we can radiate, because the average summer temperature seldom rises much above 98 degrees, and this is our normal blood temperature, yet, because we eat foods which force us to generate more heat than we can radiate, up goes the skin temperature and we feel the heat. If the function of heating the body were independent of the function of producing muscular energy, we could stop consuming fuel food in summer and keep cool. As we can't do this, we must have recourse to the common sense method of choosing those foods which generate the maximum of energy together with the minimum of heat. Eat lightly, go slightly clad, but do not be afraid of exercise, and you will lessen the discomforts of the hot weather by half. It is time to start thinning down the blood for summer conditions, it is time, too, to start on our summer exercises — which are a little less strenuous than winter ones. Deep breathing and stretching exercises will give you a good start on the road to summer condition. Sd\