The body is a machine that produces waste products, wears out and needs care and attention. Maintenance is best aimed at the skin: cleanliness (not sterilizing), good skin foods, massage.
1. Teeth: Daily brushing, regular dental care.
2. Eyes: Regular check-ups.
3. Hair: This quickly reflects poor health. If your hair is lank, broken, greasy or patchy, go to a trichologist.
4. Nails: Daily manicure with occasional professional advice. .
5. Ears: Yearly check-up. You cannot clean them properly yourself.
6. Muscles: Exercise them. Good massage is worth its weight in gold.
7. Scalp: Nervous instability often shows up in temporary loss of hair. Poor diet will affect the scalp. Maintenance consists in good nutrition and skilled massage.
8. Lungs and mouth: The smoking of more than five cigarettes a day is linked with gradual deterioration of the lungs, leading to the destruction of tissue, which in turn provides areas with little resistance to infection, resulting in such diseases as bronchitis. Maintenance consists of exercising the lungs with frequent walks, and if you’re younger than middle-aged; a sport such as swimming or running.
9. Heart: A very tough organ, it weakens when not exercised. Maintenance consists of keeping your ideal weight.
10. Bones, tendons, ligaments: They need regular stretching exercises throughout life. Deterioration in bones is catastrophic, and a causative factor is poor diet over decades—and lack of exercise. Good diet with dairy produce and fruit is bone-strengthening, and exercise is essential, since bone metabolism is activated by changes in stress on the bones. Astronauts lose a lot of calcium from their bones, and exercise is used to combat this.
11. Clothes: The over use of plastics in conjunction with deodorants prevents the body from getting rid of chemical rubbish through sweating. Clothes should permit perspiration and ease of movement.
12. Hormones: Stress destroys balance in the tissues, and when that happens we are in a state of shock. The chemical balance between blood and tissues is destroyed, and nutrients flow back and forth uncontrolled. Hormones help to maintain balance, but when the hormonal system is saturated it cannot function.
13. Intestinal tract: A good diet is usually all that is necessary. Laxatives are a poor substitute for natural function
14. Vitality: We are more than biochemical machines and have only had a glimpse of the power of what we call our spirit—a mysterious entity that appears to have the power to transcend the facts of thermodynamics and physical laws.
Vitality itself is beauty, and there is no beauty without it.
