HEALTH NOTES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 371, 4 June 1928, Page 13

HEALTH NOTES

FRESH AIR AND SUNLIGHT PERSONAL HYGIENE (Contributed by the Department at Health) Fresh air is almost as valuable to health as food, states Sir George Newman It is, indeed, another element iu nutrition, for the living processes carried on in every cell of the body require oxygen. This reaches the body through the nose, passes to the lungs, enters the blood stream, and is thus carried, like the products of digestion, to all parts. Breathing should always be through the nose, in order that the air may be properly filtered and warmed before reaching the lungs. The fresh incoming air conveys oxygen and expels the used-up air of the lungs. Its physical properties of coolness and movement are valuable as conducive to the increase of metabolism and stimulation of the skin and the appetite. There can be no more far-reaching or beneficial method of improving the health of the people as a whole than the wider practice of the open-air life. Every school should be an open-air school and every home an open-air home. The temperature should be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the principal advantages of the open-air life is that it affords more opportunity of gaining benefit from direct sunlight. All the rays of the sun are advantageous, but the invisible ray beyond the violet (ultraviolet) is believed to exert special health-giving benefit. Unfortunately the ultra-violet ray is filtered out by ordinary window glass, hence its health-giving property is only obtainable in the open air. It is now used widely in its natural form in the treatment of debility, rickets, tuberculosis of the skin, bones, and joints, and artificially for some of these conditions by means of the arc lamp. Exercise and Rest

The daily exercise of the body is another primary need. Various forms of exercise tend to strengthen all the muscles (including the heart), deepen and increase the rate of respiration, produce body heat, induce the skin to perspire, secure and maintain equilibrium, and develop the motor and sensory centres of the brain. They are essential if proper benefit is to bo derived from food, if the digestive organs and the alimentary canal are to be kept in good working order, if proper secretion through the kidneys, skin and lungs is to be ensured, and if the nervous regulation of the body is to develop. Motoring has advantages, but we must beware of becoming “all liver and no legs.” To walk to the station is better than to take a bus. It should be remembered that ordinary active forms of free exercise are wisely supplemented by more regular and systematised forms of exercise, including games, swimming, and dancing. But we must not overdo physical exercise, or allow any system to become a thraldom or fetish—or be specially violent in exercise on Saturdays and negligent of it for the remainder of the week.

It is important that we should recognise that physical exercise is something vastly more than “drill and jerks.” It is one of the means by which the law of variation fulfils itself, the means by which we “exercise” and use all the organic functions of the body—respiration, circulation, digestion, excretion, reproduction —the means by which we train the organs of special sense, and educate the nervous regulation of the body. “Use or disuse” lies at the basis of variation in our bodies.

Speaking generally, it may be said that most people stand in greater need of rest than of movement. Our American cousins and ourselves are getting much too restless for good health, or even mental capacity and balance. There is an excess of noise, clatter, chattering, and meaningless activities which have no value or virtue in themselves, and for children are directly harmful. Children under 15 need ten to 12 hours in bed every night.