p. 13 | How to Keep Well by Eva Kinney Miller

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1903

How to Keep Well

By Eva Kinney Miller

It is so much easier to keep well than to get well. The world is full of people, both men and women, who, like the woman in the Bible, have suffered many things of many physicians. They run after patent medicines, they fill up sanitariums and infirmaries, they catch at Christian science, faith healing, and anything else that offers the least hope of relief from their ailments. Yet the majority of these people need never have been ill if they had only followed nature’s simple laws of health in the first place.

The body is a wonderful machine, so built as to do its work with the least possible wear and tear, and full provision has been made for the resisting of exposure and the repairing of accidents. The body will take care of itself, heal its own wounds and repair its own breaks, if given half a chance.

A few simple rules, learned when young and firmly adhered to through life, will keep one well in the face of ordinary hard work and mental strain, and recovery from accidental exposure and unexpected strains will be short and rapid.

The first of these rules is, Eat plain, simple, well-cooked food at regular hours. There are a hundred and one diseases which make people lifelong invalids, that are caused simply and solely by irregular habits of eating. Eating at irregular hours may overstrain the digestive organs, and bring on all kinds of ailments of the stomach. To get into the habit of eating just enough and no more, at regular hours, of plain food, in reasonable variety, is the way to steer clear of these troubles.

Cleanliness is an important factor in the protecting of the health. Like any other machine, the body needs to be kept clean in order to work well. The daily bath should not be neglected, but of almost equal importance are clean surroundings. Ventilation is another important matter. To sleep in impure or insufficient air will cramp the lungs, vitiate the blood, and generally unfit the body for its next day’s work, while continued sleeping in a poorly ventilated room will soon permanently weaken the lungs and heart, and make one the prey of almost any kind of germ. Have air in your sleeping-room, if you have to break a window to get it.

Exercise and rest must be alternated. The rule of giving eight hours to work, eight hours to eating and recreation, and eight hours to sleep is a good one. If you are robbed of one or two hours’ sleep one night, make it up the next day or the next.

Of course one must have daily exercise in the fresh air. Accustom yourself to all kinds of weather, and go out every day, rain or shine. Walking is a good exercise, provided it is not all on a level. Going up and down hills gives variety to the scenery, and calls different muscles into play. An occasional run is healthful. The bicycle is all right, provided it is not overdone, and the rider sits up straight, not curving the spine.

The method of dress must have its share of your sensible consideration. In winter it should be warm, but not too heavy, and in summer cool enough to be comfortable. Clothe all parts of the body with equal thickness, and hang all the weight from the shoulders, and you have the ideal healthful dress. The tight corsets, heavy skirts, and insufficient covering on arms and shoulders, have made many a woman an invalid, and must be discarded by those who value their health. I do not quite believe that tight corsets and heavy skirts hung from the hips have killed as many women as the tobacco and drink habits have men, but they have certainly gone a considerable way toward it.

Health can be cultivated. We should value our good health when we have it, be enthusiastic over it, and talk about it, that others may be helped by it. While you are young, lay the foundation which will give you strength to withstand the attacks disease may make upon you in later years.—Eva Kinney Miller, in Christian Work.