Excercises and benefits
The person who gives
proper attention to exercise and other physical activity can expect to derive a
long list of benefits. Muscles, of course, if they have been weak and sagging, they
will become strong. 50 will the heart, and the lungs and circulatory system.
Along with strength, there will be increased endurance, coordination, and joint
flexibility, and there may well be a reduction of minor aches and pain.
Postural defects, too, tension and chronic tiredness are among the most common in
plants today.
There may, of course, in some instances be an actual illness to
account for them.
But in many people the cause lays “gradual deterioration of
the body for lack of enough physical activity. The human body, it has been
observed, is capable of generating 14 horsepower with maximum effort; it
generates only 0.1 horsepower at rest. In many of us who lead sedentary lives,
there is some muscular atrophy, or wasting away; we become under muscled for
our weight, and o we may lack the strength and endurance needed even for our
sedentary jobs.
But, in addition, it may well be that in many who lead
sedentary lives, the unused horsepower, so to speak, goes into the building up
of tension, with the tension then becoming a factor in producing fatigue and,
sometimes, other complaints as well.
Physicians encounter many cases like that of a relatively
young man, in his late thirties, who had moved along well in his career and
should have been happy and at the height of his powers. Instead, he complained
of chronic fatigue, sleeping problems, growing difficulty in concentrating
effectively and handling work he once would handle with little effort. He
suffered from frequent headaches and many vague complaints that made him feel
constantly under par.
Tests disclosed no underlying disease process. And the
prescription given to him by his physician involved no medication of any kind,
only a program of activity, of regular exercise beginning at a leisurely pace
and progressing gradually, and of sports. Within a few months, he was sleeping
well, feeling vigorous and relaxed, and turning out better work in less time,
finding time to have more fun, as he put it, than he had had since his college
days.
