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HOW TO LIVE LONGER THAN EXPECTED IN YOUR LIFE?

What would you say is the normal span of human life?

Seventy or eighty years?

According to the computations of biologists, the life span of any species is from seven to fourteen times the period an individual of the species takes to reach maturity.

We mature between 20 and 25 years of age; our expecta¬tion of life could be 280, on that reckoning.

Some gerontologists (“old age” specialists) put it much higher. Dr. Christopherson of London Hospital says: ”A man might live 300, 400, or even 1000 years, if the life-sus¬taining elements were present.”

So a life span of 180 years is a very reasonable target.

First of all, let us establish that there is nothing freakish in the idea of this length of life. It is only because it is new to us that we are likely to think so.

Scientists tell us that there is nothing in the nature of protoplasm which demands a wearing out.

And humans, of course, are proto-plasm.

Take a look at some of our relatives, who have been going—it's a fair assumption—almost since the beginning of time.

There is the protoplasm called Paramecium Aurelia, or “immortal protoplasm.” In 1911, L. L. Wood¬ruff and R. Erdman began experiments with it.

By 1928, 8000 generations had been registered, but it was still as good as new. It showed no sign of decay, senile or other¬wise.

In the plant world, there is apparent ' ‘immortality*' also. One of the cacti goes on living, it seems, forever. So do the giant sequoia trees of California.

There are orange trees in the orangerie of the palace of Versailles said to have been planted by Eleanor of Castile.

In Mexico there is a cypress which was a contemporary of Cortez. Baobabs, found chiefly in Africa, can live for 6000 years.

Some fish are Methuselahs. Carp and pike can live 300 years, if not indefinitely.

A few hundred years is nothing to a crocodile—in Africa, crocodiles have been found which are believed to be about 1700 years old.

Wild boars can live to about the 300-year mark; donkeys, swans and par¬rots are often centenarians. Tortoises sometimes survive for several centuries.

And even we, the human race, can put in a few records. Methuselah nearly reached Dr. Christopherson's suggested limit of 1000 years; according to the Old Testament, he was 969 when he died.

Joseph lived to be 110, Sarah to 197, Abraham to 275.

Moses, who began all this three-score-years-and-ten life-span business, lived to be 127 himself.

And at that age, so the Bible says, “his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated.”

The ancient Greek race, the Pelasgians, would have con-sidered that to die at 70 was to die in the cradle, almost. Plato, Xenophon, and Pythagorus are among the writers who tell us that Pelasgian life expectancy was at least 200 years.

Like Moses, to the last their “natural force was not abated.’’ And their hair did not turn gray.

Galen, the great physician, lived 140 years. Socrates died at 106 (and, but for that cup of hemlock, might have made his second century),

Sophocles at 130. Pliny tells us of a musician who, at the age of 150, looked no more than 50.

Then there was the midwife who attended Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I; she lived to be 103. In 1500 a man called Jenkins was born in Yorkshire.

He died at the age of 170. Thomas Parr's birthplace was London, the date 1588. He died 207 years later, also in London.

There is a record of a marriage which just missed a triple diamond celebration. It lasted 147 years. The husband died at 173, the wife at 184. At 150 years of age, these people are said to have looked as if they were about 50.

Roger Bacon, who studied longevity, believed that a man's span should be, normally, 1000 years.

In this century there are runners-up for this goal al¬ready. There are quite a few candidates in Russia, all well on the far side of the first hundred years.

In the Persian village of Kelusah lives Sayed Ali, who is 195 years old. He was married, he says, in 1790.

His eldest son died young—at 120—but Ali still has four children living. Two sons are 105 and 90 respectively. He has a daughter of 110. The baby of the family, Gulbeenz, is 80. Sayed

Ali is fully active. He does not wear, and does not need to wear, spectacles.
Lyubov Pujak, a Russian, claims to be 150 years old and to have watched Napoleon's attack on Moscow.

He has two younger brothers, aged 121 and 118, and a sister of only 112. In the Talysh mountains of Central Asia, Mahmoud Eivazov lives and works on a collective farm.

Two years ago he was given the Red Banner of Labor on reaching his 148th birthday.

He has 118 grandchildren, great-grand¬children, and great-great-grandchildren.
A shooting contest, organized last year by the young people of the Caucasian village of Tsugari, was won by Mi to Khubulov, who is 141 years of age.

Several American Civil War veterans survived both the fighting and the century mark, and some former slaves were alive and sprightly at between 115 and 120.

Not yet in the same class, but coming up well, is a Mrs. de Vere of Canterbury, Britain, who on her 103rd birth-day last year cooked lunch for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—and got up extra early to make sure that everything ran according to plan.

Among the people following the longevity plan outlined in this book is a woman of 75.

She teaches a strenuous form of dancing; she is as supple as a girl in her twenties—and looks as if she were in her forties.

Her flesh is firm; she has no wrinkles. Her hair is dark; her teeth are beautiful—and her own.

Slim, trim, and active is a woman I know of, whose hair is light brown and whose complexion is attractive at 85.

Last year she had three proposals of marriage. But she is still single; she said she would “wait a bit before taking the plunge.”

A doctor was mistaken for his own son by a woman he had treated forty years before.

Miss Marion Jones wrote her autobiography, The Jot-tings of Jemima, two years ago when she was 100.

Not too long afterward, her neighbors complained of the noise in her flat because of the number of visitors.

So Miss Jones moved to a house outside Edinburgh, Scotland, where she could entertain undisturbed and undisturbing.

There is nothing bizarre, I repeat, in living out one's full life span. The people who do it are neither freaks nor helpless hulks.

It is only because we do not yet meet men and women every day who are over 100 that we find anything odd about living to such an age.

We shall get used to it. If you were a crocodile, you would not think twice about the fact that your father was over 1000.

Nor would you expect him to be a senile invalid.

It is only because we have been conditioned to a life-time of three score years and ten that to live longer, and to live longer without growing old, seems so fantastic.

It is because the tempo of our minds is set to a shorter rhythm that we feel a life span of 180 years would be endless.

But in any case, why worry now about whether time will drag when you're in your hundreds?

You can start complaining then if you find the days too long—but by then you will never find time to do all you want to do.

It is a fact that, as we grow older, time passes more quickly.

Do you remember how, when you were a child, a month seemed to last about as long as a year lasts now?

And that a school term stretched to eternity?

Both physiologically and psychologically, much more happens to us when we are young than when we get older.
 
So a year to a child is really much longer than it is to an adult. It has been estimated that sidereal time flows four times slower for a child of 10 than for a man of 50.

“Young and old,” says Pierre Lecomte du Nouy, “united in the same space, live in separate universes, where the value of time is radically different.”
Who hasn't said, “If only I had time to do so and so . . .”?

Most of us have to leave so much undone. By the time we have managed to get enough knowledge and ex¬perience and poise to enjoy life, it is almost over.

If the great philosophers and scientists and leaders of world progress had had a little more time, the human race might be much better off in many ways than it now is.

Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy, said: “Life is too short.” But, he added, ”I think that hygiene and biochemistry will teach mankind to prolong its years far beyond the three score and ten.”

Well, we are learning. Hygiene has disposed of some threats to longevity.

Biochemistry (the science of life) is showing what the natural resources of foodstuffs can do toward increasing the length of youth and life.

The great American nutritionist, Professor Henry C. Sherman, has shown that the life span of animals can be increased enormously by correct diet—the supply of the foods which contain elements necessary to the processes of the body.

Sherman says that never before have we known so much about our bodies' needs, so that never before have we been in a better position to supply them, a point which I shall refer to again.

By correct diet we too can lay the foundations of a longer life span for ourselves.
Many people have the mistaken idea that we cannot live long or healthily unless we “get back to Nature.”

But how far back?

Are we to swing from the trees by a substitute for our now nonexistent tails?

Or find ourselves a fur wrap and a cave?

Or retire to a log cabin without benefit of electricity or plumbing?

Surely the conditions of the age in which we happen to live are “natural*’ for us, and it is common sense to make use of their benefits when we can.

That does not mean to say we need accept the mistakes as well—among them the processed foods and the impure air.

We can get something done to put these right—if we try hard enough and long enough.

And meanwhile, among the benefits of our age, we have opportunities of improving physical health in ways not available to our ancestors.

Sherman has exploded the idea that primitive man necessarily lived healthily, that his diet was '‘right.” Primitive man could not pick and choose what he would have for dinner. He ate what he could get on the spot—and that was that.

Perhaps it was right; in terms of nutritional needs, perhaps it wasn't.

That often it wasn't is demonstrated by the condition of prehistoric skeletons. “Post-mortems” on them show many forms of imperfection, including dental cavities.

Our early ancestors went short of minerals and vitamins. Now we need not go short of them. We can build up health in ways not possible in those days.

In a few years, scientists say, dental caries should occur no more often than rickets occurs today.

We can help our bodies to keep going for the full biologic span by providing right conditions, says Dr. Edward Börtz, former president of the American Medical Association.

He believes that our life span should be a minimum of 150 years.

The conditions essential to achieving it he lists as exercise, a straight spine, good diet, plenty of meat, eggs, and milk; vitamins and minerals, and two to three quarts of liquid daily—enough sleep and rest, and occupation for mind and hands.

But there is another factor, the vital factor. It is YOU— your attitude to life, your will to live.

Dr. Börtz stresses this point. “It largely depends on each individual how long he or she lives” he says.

This onward-thrusting force has been operating since it sent protoplasm in search of better living quarters and urged fish to quit the water and grow wings.

It is in all of us, and it can help us to claim the birthright of our normal span of life, if we awaken it.

Although we all have it, we don't all use our will to live.

This accounts for the fact that some people go on when others stop, that some people are living although their doc-tors say they should be dead.

One ship sails east and another west With the self-same winds that blow;
'Tis the set of the sail and not the gale Which determines the way they go.

We have to set our sails toward the 180 mark if we want to reach it. We have to believe we can achieve it, and make every effort to that end.

As Dr. Börtz says: People must help themselves as well as take advantage of scientific dis¬coveries.

Living to be 180isa matter of making full use of all these discoveries and of all our potentialities, mental and physical.

It can reveal us to ourselves, because so few of us have any idea of the scope of our full capabilities and energies. We can all surprise ourselves by what we can do when we really try.

The body is a superb, self-renewing organism. Give it the tools and it will do its job. But you can't make bricks without straw—and that is what most people seem to ex¬pect their bodies to do.

The mind is a dynamo, capable of generating a power, the limits of which no one so far can even guess.

Every one of us is well equipped to set out on the adven¬ture of achieving longevity. Our ancestors, who won their battle for survival, saw to that.

The next step is up to you.

SUMMARY

MOSES' PRESCRIPTION of 70 as the cut-off point for the hu-man life span has been followed by centuries of uncritical acceptance.

Yet, in the words of a song from Porgy and Bess, “It ain't necessarily sol” Moses himself disproved it by departing, according to the Old Testament, vigorous at 127.

In the world of nature

• the Paramecium Aurelia has been living almost
since the beginning of time

• the baobab can live 6000 years

• today's sequoia trees include many that are cen¬
turies old

• crocodiles believed to be 1700 years old have been
found

• wild boars, carp, and pike can live at least 300 years

• even the jackass joins the century club
Among humans

• the Bible says that Methuselah lived 969 years,
Abraham 275, and his wife Sarah reached 197

• the Pelasgians of ancient Greece had a life ex¬
pectancy of 200

• Thomas Parr, a Londoner, lived to be 207

• an Iranian, Sayed Ali, is presently living his way
from the age of 195 to 200

• a considerable number of people today are over 100
and going strong

In view of all this, and the fact that knowledgeable physi-cians could live from 300 to 1000 years, even 180 is a modest goal!

CONQUEST OF DECAY

The fight is on. All over the world scientists and medical men have joined against the forces of decay and death.

In labora¬tories, in clinics, at world conferences, they are discovering, discussing, experimenting with ways and means of defeat¬ing senility and extending the human life span.

“Freedom from senility is possible” says Dr. Martin Gumpert, a leading American gerontologist. “Old age is a disease, and it is curable” Professor H. C. Sherman, the eminent nutritionist, tells us.

Metalnikov, the famous Russian biologist, has said: “It is possible to delay old age and death, and science must take a very serious interest in this problem.’’

New scientific discoveries constantly reaffirm these state¬ments. Medical opinion confirms them. Doctors say: “With our aggregate of medical knowledge, no child need suffer from rickets, and no elderly person need suffer from senility” “Census statistics show clearly that prolongation of productive life is not a Utopian dream.”

Finally, “There is no truth either to the formula that we must die at 70, or to the belief that we must necessarily be tortured in old age by the humiliation of senility.”

That is certainly clear enough, isn't it?

Take particular note of the first part of the last-quoted medical opinion.

It is another nail in the coffin of the three-score-years-and-ten myth—and it is about time that this was decently buried.

For centuries we have been hyp¬notized by the idea that seventy years of life is our allotted span.

For this, as I said earlier, Moses was to blame to a great extent.

His recorded pronouncement was probably the greatest single source of discouragement to would-be “longer-lifers.”

The average person has long considered that living beyond the age of seventy was a fluke, a freakish notion-flying in the face of Providence.

Yet Moses himself is said to have lived to be 127. And in the book of Genesis we find these words: “The Lord said . . . ‘man also is flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years ”

It is odd that we should prefer to believe Moses rather than the Creator in this matter.

After all, He should know. Yet most of us plan our lives to fit in with the seventy-year span. It is the basis of insurance companies' policies. Pen¬sion plans and retirement ages are geared to it.

You and I and our parents were brought up and educated to this pattern, as are children today. It is firmly established in the human mind.

An idea which is accepted hook, line, and sinker by the mind becomes a force to be reckoned with.

It sinks into the subconscious. It can influence behavior; it can affect the tissues of the body.

Doctors acknowledge this when they admit the important part a patient's attitude and con¬victions play in recovery from illness or in keeping disease at bay.

So, a belief in the seventy-year allotted span must be cleared thoroughly away before we can make real progress toward our 180th birthdays.

Doubt can sabotage all our efforts. It can lose any battle for us by undermining our forces from within.

If you want to get results, from this moment onward re¬fuse to give houseroom in your mind to negative thoughts for one single moment.

The thoughts that age is creeping up on you, that disease is waiting around the corner, that you are weakening or deteriorating in any way must not be allowed to register in the subconscious.

They are dan¬gerous, they act as poisons in the mind, they materialize as real obstacles in the path of achievement.

Begin to think and act and plan NOW for a long life, for long health and long youth. These concepts will crowd out failure thoughts.

The mind cannot hold two ideas simultaneously.

Science assures us that there is no reason why we should not realize our full life potential.

But we, ourselves, must also be convinced that it can be done.

This is the basis on which, to a great extent, success depends.

The mind needs time to accustom itself to fresh ideas. Give your new attitude a chance to jell.

And constantly re¬mind yourself that you are laying the foundations of long health and youth and life, and that what you are doing must produce the results you want.

Sooner or later the prospect of living to 180 will be generally accepted, and it will seem no more remarkable than the thought of living to 80 is at the moment.

Lon¬gevity is a trend. It is developing with another trend: the trend of nations to age—the proportion of old to young people in most nations is increasing rapidly.

In Britain, by the end of 1961, according to estimates, the number of people over 65 will be 5,300,000.

In the United States, there are today, according to the latest published figures, more than 15,300,000 people who are over 65.

If those twenty million plus are to be “passengers” —if they are less and less able to pull their weight in the life of the nation—productive workers will have to carry a crippling burden.

And there will be other problems, also.

If people get old at 65 and become more and more infirm in their seventies and eighties, and if the numbers in these age groups increase, the number of younger people needed to look after them must increase also.

That will mean a two-way whittling down of manpower.

The proportion of active workers in the population will be smaller—and a substantial number of them will not be available for essential industries.

They will be needed to look after the old people.

In any language and any country, this is a problem. If the productive life of men and women could be prolonged, that would be an answer.

That is one reason why the fight against decay has become a global warfare, and why the possibilities of living long without growing old are being probed all over the world.

A congress of medical men was held in London recently to discuss the subject. In Basle, about a year ago, a hundred doctors recorded their opinion that “to show signs of aging at 80 is premature” and that “we should live to at least 140 years of age, or more.”

America has a Life Prolongation Research Institute, headed by Dr. Johan Björksten.

He is a biochemist and a gerontologist; his researches are subsidized by the U.S. Air Force Scientific Research Department to the amount of some $8500 a year.

The reason for this is that the cost of train¬ing a pilot is so high and his operational life so short that it is not an economic proposition.

The USAF considers it well worth while to subsidize research which might make the extension of a man's flying years possible.

Dr. Björksten, a 46-year-old Swedish scientist, believes that we grow old because, as we go through life, molecules of protein of which all cells are made—and which they must have for repair and maintenance and rebuilding— become interlocked.

In that condition they cannot be used by the system. They form useless “dumps” which clog the cells.

This cluttering of the system with ineffective protein, says Dr. Björksten, results in aging and in death.

Dr. Björksten is trying to discover a substance which is capable of breaking up this cross-linkage of molecules.

Then the body's machinery would be in running order once more.

And when (Dr. Björksten says when, not if) it is discovered, people will stop growing old and begin growing younger. “It may prove easier to reverse the aging process than to halt it,” he says.

Nutritionists have always been in the forefront of the fight against decay.

A world-famous pioneer of the “science of eating,” Professor Henry C. Sherman, who has already been quoted, has proved by experiments with animals that certain vitamins and minerals, when added to a normal diet, can extend the length of life and also the prime of life.

Dr. Tom Spies, another great name in nutrition, has been working for more than twenty years along these lines.

He has treated prematurely aged men and women, and invalids who have been given up by doctors as hopeless cases.

The treatment used has been “food therapy”—diets high in protein, natural vitamins, and minerals, supple-mented by synthetic vitamins.

Dr. Spies says that the re-newed health and vitality of these people show that “pre-mature aging can be reversed and the period of the prime prolonged.”

Dr. T. S. Gardner, another internationally known nutri-tion expert, has proved the importance of food to lon¬gevity.

He found that the life span of animals could be in¬creased by 46.4 per cent by the addition of pyridoxin (Vitamin B6), yeast nucleic acid, and pantothexic acid (another B vitamin) to their diet.

The fight against decay must include campaigns against “killer” diseases. Dr. F. Steigman of Chicago, Dr. Charles Glen King, Director of the Nutrition Foundation of New York City, and Charles West of Toronto, one of the dis-coverers of insulin, are among the pioneers of research into the prevention of abnormal accumulations of fatty substances in the liver and elsewhere.

These fatty deposits are thought to be directly related to the incidence of the chief killers of our time: heart attacks, strokes, and kidney disease.

Thirty-five per cent of the population of England over the age of 10 died from vascular diseases in 1946, and the number is still rising. In another chapter, we shall go into this matter in greater detail.

The chief treatment used in such cases was a high-pro-tein diet, with massive vitamin dosage, particularly of one of the B group, choline.

This vitamin is usually present in most diets in borderline amounts only. It is one of the factors that controls fat movement in the body, the lipo-tropic vitamin.

A Committee of Longevity was formed in the U.S. in 1940. Its members are one-time students of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

Their object is to study disease prevention and the conditions necessary for lengthening the life span.

The average age of members is in the seventies. Many are between 80 and 85.

They are using every means known to medical science—in¬cluding nutrition and endocrinology—to prove by their own example that health and life can be prolonged.

Lately, membership has been extended to wives of members. If they were not made members, it was felt, the committee would come to consist largely of widowers.

In Russia, doctors and scientists have taken the subject of longevity very seriously for some time. One of the pio-neers of the theory of rejuvenation was Metchnikov.

He believed that old age is a disease and that its pre-mature appearance, according to scientific reckoning, was due to poisoning of the organism—self-poisoning or autointoxica¬tion.

Other famous names in rejuvenation research are Metalnikov, Filatov, Lepeshinskaya, and Alexander and Victor Bogomoletz.

Professor Alexander Bogomoletz founded the Institute of Experimental Biology and Pathology of the Ukraine and was President of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine.

He was celebrated for his theory that the secret of keeping young lay in the connective tissues; the “pack¬aging” of our organs and tissues, which had not been given much attention before his researches.

The connective tissue, says Bogomoletz, is the chief factor in defending, preserving, and stimulating the human organism.

According to him, we become old physically (and mentally also) because of changes in the connective tissue.

The body is less and less able to absorb nourish¬ment (under this heading water is included); in a sense, we die of starvation. Bogomoletz puts it this way: “The nutrition of the cells becomes disturbed, hunger follows, vital activity decreases; old age and death ensue.”

His famous antireticular-cytotoxic serum (ACS for short) was evolved as an answer.

It is a substance, he claimed, which becomes a factor in the stimulation and re¬generation of the connective tissue and, through this medium, of the tissues and cells of the whole body.

The serum is said to be effective in the treatment of certain cancerous conditions; it is used, it seems, in many Soviet hospitals for many kinds of disease with excellent results.

But the nature of the materials from which it is made, and the extreme difficulty of preparation, make it so rare outside Russia that, if we had to depend on ACS injections to keep us going, our chances of reaching 180 wouldn't be worth much.

Professor Alexander Bogomoletz’ relative, Victor, de-veloped a method of preventing and reversing the aging process that he called Externotherapy.

This aims at stimu-lating and nourishing the connective tissue and the en-docrine system (and, through them, the other cells of the body) by means of the skin.

The skin, which is being recognized more and more by science as having a most im¬portant influence on the health, is prepared by Externo-therapy's methods to absorb certain substances which act upon the cells of the body, reactivating its functioning.
 

“Tissular” therapy is the name given by another famous Russian biologist, Professor Filatov, to his method of de¬laying and reversing the aging processes.

His work was based on his discovery that there are substances which— when tissues decompose, are attacked, or are hurt in any way—are produced in great quantities.

They have tre¬mendous energizing powers which are capable of regener¬ating living tissue.

We have all seen, many times, the action of these substances: decomposing tissue of dead leaves, plants, or animals is the best fertilizer of new growth.

Perhaps Omar Khayyam had something when he said: ”I sometimes think that never blows so red The rose, as where some buried Caesar bled . . .”

Filatov was apparently the first biologist to identify these substances and to experiment with them. Biogenic stimu¬lins he called them.

They are not actually a substance, he said, but a collection of substances whose composition has not yet been determined.

They are at least partially heat-resistant; they keep their properties after having been heated for one hour at a temperature above the boiling point.

They are soluble in water and can be distilled as water vapor. They are neither an albumin nor a ferment.

Biogenic stimulins are present, Filatov discovered, in all living tissues, from plant to man, and also in the soil itself.

The earth is a rich repository of these dynamic stimulins.

Filatov's theory is that the therapeutic value of water springs is not explained solely by mineral salt content but at least in part by the living substances, such as the stimulins, with which they have become charged during their wanderings underground.

“Tissular” therapy is the harnessing of the power of these stimulins for human use.

Filatov found that this could be done by introducing a very small piece of “dead” human tissue under the skin.

This tissue worked through the connective tissue of the host, through the blood stream and all the cells, renewing them and their activities.

The best form of foreign tissue for this purpose, Filatov dis¬covered, was a segment of sterilized human placenta.

Tissular therapy is said to bring about a regeneration of the entire organism.

Today this complete form of regenera¬tion is realized as being the only sound method of tackling the “aging” problem.

Earlier methods of hormone in¬jections, grafts and the like affected one function or organ only. As a result, the balance of the glandular system might be upset.

Reactions were not controlled. The danger of stimulating one set of glands or organs is realized much more clearly today than it was in the pioneering days of rejuvenation.

Professor Filatov insisted that any genuine rejuvenation or regeneration must come through influencing the ener¬gies of the entire organism.

The Italian biologist Tallarico has said of these stimuli: “They make themselves felt on the organism as a whole . . . activating its vital potential and increasing its capacity for resistance, thus stimulating the power of healing and regeneration.”

Dr. Victor Bogomoletz, I believe, has made use of the biogenic stimulins in conjunction with Externotherapy.

The principles of the two methods are related, but the scope of Externotherapy is wider.

It takes into consideration other factors besides the physical method of treatment.

Dr. Bogomoletz believes that psychological and spiritual elements must also play an important part in total rejuve¬nation.

Since we have minds as well as bodies, this is only common sense. And I believe that the mind can prove an aid of tremendous power in the fight against premature death and decay.

We must make use of it, and of the dis¬coveries of science such as nutrition, the “basic factor/’ and of all methods which help mind and body to renew themselves.

It is a great adventure.

You may not realize how great it is until you feel re-sponse in your body to your efforts.

But as you find your-self capable of more and more, instead of less and less, the horizons of life widen once more, beyond the few short years which were their narrow compass.

From now on, you can forget your age. Don't be hypno-tized by what your birth certificate says. Chronological age doesn't matter.

Biological age does—and you can begin to grow younger now, at this moment, if—as Dr. Börtz says— you will help yourself to do that.

Or do you feel that the infirmities, the ugliness, the dis-abilities of age are our lot and that from them there is no escape?

They are only inescapable if we accept them. Begin now to deny them. Never forget old age is a disease, and it is curable.

Now is the time to begin the cure.

A SURVEY OF THE PROGRAM

We do not need to accept premature aging, with its difficulties, infirmities and indignities, as our fate. Nor premature death.

“At eighty, we should not even be entering the prime of life” That was the considered opin¬ion of the Berne Medical Congress recently held.

Dr. Douglas Latto, the eminent London dietician and consult¬ant, agrees with the findings of this conference on lon¬gevity.

These are his actual words. “We have all the resources and researchers of chemistry, biochemistry, nu¬trition, biology, physiology, psychology, and parapsychol¬ogy to help and support us—to enable us to reach our full span of life.

We can live long without growing old.”

You will remember that I quoted Dr. Christopherson of London Hospital as saying that a man “might live 300,400, or even 1000 years, if the life-sustaining elements were present.”

Professor Starling mentions that recent discov¬eries about the chemistry of the body should make possible prolongation not of old age but of youth.

Speaking of ways and means of conquering old age and decay, Dr. George Aldridge says that, as a result of biochemic discoveries, “life will be prolonged, the race will be made better and stronger, and many moral, spiritual, as well as material blessings will follow in its train.”

“We can make old age wait,” says Dr. Tom Spies. Those of us who succeed in doing so must obviously be fit in mind and body, a nucleus of a “better and stronger race.”

Well, the potential is there. As we have seen, man is the only animal whose biologic clock does not run to its limit-seven to fourteen times the number of years in which in¬dividuals mature.

Biologic clocks run for periods (according to the species in which they operate) between a few hours and hundreds of years.

The life cycle of some insects is a day; others live for a few months or a year.

Then we have birds and animals which live up to about twenty years. And there are species whose members are mostly centenarians plus-birds, fish, and animals, among them carp, pike, eagles, parrots, crocodiles, and elephants.

There is the same variation in the setting of the biologic clocks in plant life, although so far there is no clue to its underlying cause.

Some types of tree, such as the sequoias of California, live for thousands of years; others, oaks for instance, merely for hundreds.

An oak tree at Catsfield, near Hastings, England, nearly reached the 1000 mark. It was there—probably not more than a sapling—when Wil¬liam the Conqueror landed in 1066.

It has just been cut down because it was thought to be decaying. But it had managed to survive 900 years.

Even more inexplicable is the fact that some individuals of a species live two or three times as long as the rest of their relatives.

There is the rose tree in Germany which has lived hundreds of years longer than the normal span of its kin; a cypress in Chapultepec, Mexico, is said to be 2000 years old.

Cases of “centenarian” animals occur among their shorter-lived brethren.

And in the days when general expectation of human life was much shorter than it is now, there were men and women who lived well to¬ward their second century-—such as Thomas Parr and the midwife of Charles I's queen.

Biologists think that the differing life span of species will be explained eventually by some “built-in” limiting factor. The individual “long-lifers1' are Nature's darlings, they think.

The body chemistry of these types is the per-fect product.

Whatever the reason for these assorted lengths of sur-vival, they show us that a life span can be extended almost indefinitely.

And in the bee we have an example of what Nature herself does in that line. Worker bees and drones live four to five months. The queen bee can live about eight years.

The queen bee does not begin life as a super model. She comes from an ordinary egg and an ordinary larva. Her phenomenal life span (for a bee), her larger size and in general rather superior looks are the result of food.

All larvae in a hive get the same diet for their first three days. After that, only the larvae which are to become queens are specially fed.

For the rest of their lives they eat only a substance called royal jelly.

And it is this food,and this alone, which transforms ordinary larvae into queen bees.

But for us the answer is not quite so simple as for bees. We can't live in a controlled temperature on a specialized diet, with hundreds of attendants to wait on us, and follow a set pattern of existence.

We have to overcome a number of threats to longevity; the “back-room boys” of biology have been investigating them.

Apparently, senility is not among them. The percentage of people who die from true senility is a minute proportion of “old age” deaths.

Autointoxication (self-poisoning) is thought to be an arch-criminal as regards life-shortening. Unhealthy living conditions are a contributory factor.

Lack of vitamins is another; and, says a London specialist, “Death is more frequently due to a lack of an adequately balanced supply of iron, copper, magnesium, and potassium than to any other cause.”

The most high-powered killer of them all is thought to be the stress syndrome.

This has been mentioned a good deal in the press and elsewhere in the last few years; it covers stress and strain of any kind.

Worry, grief, fear, frustration—any emotions that make us tense and disturb us—upset the glandular mechanism of the body and di-gestion, increase blood pressure, and react adversely on every process and function.

The stress syndrome breaks down the cells; it exhausts and destroys us. “We die be-cause we think,” if we allow ourselves continually to think negatively.

Mind over matter—the effect of mental states on the body—is getting a good deal of medical attention these days.

The British cancer specialist Sir Heneage Ogilvie, mentioned elsewhere in this book, said he had never known a cancer patient without a mental problem.

When there is anxiety of some kind, a difficulty which the mind cannot resolve, it turns it over, as it were, to the body.

The problem objectifies itself as a headache or other ache, or illness of some kind.

Some cases of asthma have been traced to unresolved difficulties and frustrations.

The mechanism is in a way like that which causes an oyster to form a pearl around a foreign body of which it cannot rid itself.

The basic irritation is hidden, but this is a make¬shift measure, not a real solution.
The child—or adult—who wants to be the center of at-tention, and isn't, will often develop some physical ail¬ment.

The illness is “real,” although its cause is in the mind.

That is hardly surprising when one thinks how easily the body can be disturbed by the mind, and in particular how sensitive the glands are to its influence.

The functions of the body depend to a greater or lesser degree upon the functioning of the endocrine glands; if they are not working properly, there will soon be signs of ill health of some kind.

Anything that affects one gland will eventually affect the others; although each gland has its own work to do, it is in very close association with the rest.

Each gland produces hormones which control or regu-late physical processes. And in all this activity, the anterior lobe of the pituitary is the “king of the castle.”

In its turn, the pituitary gland is regulated by the nerve centers of the brain.
Here thought and emotion “pull the strings.”

And it is important to see that the stress syndrome is not pulling the wrong strings if we want to work against the onset of premature old age and death.

Before we begin this work, let us take a brief survey of the position and of the ways and means to be used in order to reach our goal.

THE  FOOD  FACTOR

Some nutritionists believe that by correct diet alone we ought to be able to increase our life span to normal—150 to 200 years.

Correct diet means the right quantities of vitamins, minerals, protein, and the like, for the complex needs of the body.

It does not mean food which only satisfies the feeling of hunger, which is no guide so far as real nutrition goes.

The stomach is easily deceived tempo¬rarily. It would say “thank you very much” for a meal of old boot stewed till soft and tastily served.

Correct diet means food in the sense of substances which satisfy the hidden hunger of the cells.

Food is a good starting point for our survey because it is the basic factor. Our bodies, our flesh and bones and blood, are made of the food we eat.

What we eat today walks and talks tomorrow.

If our meals are poor from the real nutrition point of view—for instance if they are chiefly composed of white sugar, white flour, white bread, overcooked vegetables, not enough pro¬tein or fruit—the way we walk and talk will be affected.

The science of nutrition, the science of eating in fact, shows us that the way we eat has a powerful influence on health.

Food deficiencies can cause disease; the right food can do a great deal to prevent it.
No doubt it can help us, also, a long way on the road towards our 180th birthdays.

As we have seen, the life span of animals has been prolonged, doubled and even more,by planned diets containing the right amounts of the right foods.

Symptoms of aging, graying fur, feebleness, and simi¬lar conditions have been reversed.

Real nutrition can work wonders with human beings, too. I would like to remind you of Dr. Tom Spies' work along these lines—the * ‘resurrection” of 893 chronically ill people in Birmingham, Alabama, in particular.

These people were in such a bad condition that they had not worked for years.

The majority had been sent to the nutri¬tion clinic after their own doctors had given them up as hopeless.

Their treatment was correct diet, supplemented by massive doses of vitamins and minerals.

These people recovered their health and were able to work again. Among them were shipbuilders, farm workers, miners-men who had to do a hard job of physical labor—as well as white-collar workers and housewives.

In England, some doctors (among them Harley Street men) are treating illnesses as deficiency diseases.

One of these has had successes with cancer cases and with many forms of illness. Recently he was consulted by a woman who had had a form of diarrhea for nearly three months.

Her own doctor had been able to do nothing for her; she had been to an orthodox specialist who could give her no treatment, and no hope. Progressively she was getting thin¬ner and weaker.

After three days of the deficiency-supple¬mentation treatment, she improved. In a few weeks she was cured and there has been no relapse.

Let me quote, from my own experience, the case of a woman whose knees were as big as basketballs as a result of rheumatism.

She could not bend them; she was never out of pain. She also had chronic skin irritation, periodic swelling of the face, weeping eczema on her fingers.

Doctors and specialists told her there was no cure for any of these complaints; they said they did not know the cause.

Planned eating, with diet supplements, put her right in a couple of months. When she went back to the hospital re¬cently for a check-up, she was told: “You are cured. It's a miracle.”

A woman who had hemorrhoids had been told the only cure was surgery, which she was reluctant to undergo.

I suggested that she should try a planned diet and diet sup¬plements, which she decided to do. In less than two months the hemorrhoids disappeared.

Often migraine yields to correct nutrition. I know sev-eral cases in which this has happened.

And a scalp irrita-tion which had been written off by doctors, treated in the same way, disappeared after a few weeks. It had been pres¬ent for more than two years.

Dogs, too, can be helped by diet treatment. Paralysis, hysteria, skin troubles—all sorts of ailment can be due to food deficiencies.

A partially paralyzed dachshund, which I treated by diet and mineral and vitamin supplements, recovered the use of its legs-^although it had been con¬demned to death by the vet, who said he could do nothing.

And a young dog, whose destruction also had been recommended because he had hysteria and fits, is now in the best of health and spirits after the same type of treatment.

These “miracles” of nutrition give some idea of what this new science is doing for us.

As Sherman says, because of its researches we are better able to give our bodies what they need in order to keep young and healthy than ever before (at least in recorded history), because we know more of what those needs are.

The first step we must take toward lengthening our life span is to study the best ways of satisfying the “hunger of the cells”

The cells in different parts of the body have different needs, but feeding them is not such a compli¬cated business as it sounds.

You can draw up menus which reach the “real” nourish-ment standard without any difficulty from the lists given in later chapters of foods and the appendixes which con¬tain the elements the cells must have.

There is nothing out-of-the-way about the foods I have suggested. Eating for health simply means choosing foods which nourish the body and eliminating those which do not.

Diet will give you wonderful results. But although food is the basic factor, it is not the only one. Movement and the right use of the muscles can be sources of youth and health; the way we breathe is of paramount importance. And we cannot forget the part played by the dominant factor, the mind.

MOVEMENTS  AND  MUSCLES

Dr. Edward Börtz, a former president of the American Medical Association who believes that the normal span of our life should be at least 150, says that premature old age can be caused by muscles wasting away.

Few people seem to realize this; and if they do, they do not realize that it need not happen—or that, even if it has happened, some¬thing can be done about it.

Flabbiness is Enemy No. 1 of youth; it is deterioration. To keep the body firm, the cells must be given the food elements they need to form healthy tissue; the muscles must be well fed. But they must also be used.

As we get older we tend to abuse, rather than to use, our muscles. We tend to underwork them—and that is as bad as overworking them.

We are inclined to use legs, arms, hands, the whole body, in a half-hearted way and to let some muscles do work for which they were never in¬tended.

For instance, we use hands and arms to lever us up from a sitting position—work which should be done by the muscles of the thighs, abdomen, and diaphragm.

The less we ask of our muscles, the less they will do. So, by and by, we find that movement becomes effort instead of pleasure.

Movement, when muscles are strong and coordinated, is a joy in itself. Everyone feels that joy when young: then we move for the sake of moving.

And we lose it so gradually that we do not notice its going. We forget it, until it comes back again—until, well-fed and re-edu¬cated, the muscles begin to work once more as they were meant to work.

Then, when we are in full control of our bodies again, we remember that we have not felt this way for years. In fact, we feel young!

The technique of muscle re-education is a most im¬portant part in our longevity program.

One of the methods about which I shall tell you in a later chapter was used by the ancient Greeks during the peak period of their civilization, when their physical beauty was legendary.

BREATH

If we don't breathe, we don't live. We all know that is true. But what we don't all realize is that the better we breathe the better we live.

The breath can be a source of energy and vitality and of health—if we breathe correctly.

There is a great deal more in the way we breathe than we are apt to think.

The rate and depth of inhalation and exhalation affects every function of the body, and influ-ences the mind. A shallow, short breath is a life-shortener, we are told.

And certainly animals whose breathing rate is more rapid than our own—dogs, for instance—live only about one quarter as long as we live.

So our long-life program includes techniques for breathing longer—and deeper.

THE  MIND

The mind, with its power of influencing the body for good or ill, cannot be left out of our calculations.

Mental suggestion can produce far-reaching results on and changes in our physical system.

The image-making faculty of the mind can speed up the results for which we are working.

Another aspect of the mind's power is the stress syndrome and the havoc it can produce in the body.

How are we to avoid being destroyed by the strain, the friction, the frus¬tration with which we meet constantly?

A whole book could be written on this subject alone. At the present moment, we can deal only with its ABCs.

And we can take comfort from the fact that just as the mind affects the body, so does the body affect the mind.

So, by the use of controlled breathing and methods of rehabilitating the muscles and the whole physical mech-anism, the mind becomes steadier and more controlled.

Improving bodily health reacts on the mental condition and on the brain itself.

The fact that movement has a re-flex action on the brain has been proved by training mentally deficient children through motor culture.

As a result, intellectual ability was improved.So we have a line of defense against the stress syndrome.

And as we build up, brick by brick as it were, our own powers, we build up the ability to live out our normal life span in full health and activity.
That is our program.

SUMMARY

OUR PROGRAM for longevity has a simple motto and ele-ments.

The motto, in the words of Dr. Tom Spies, is this: We can make old age wait!
The elements, which we shall consider in detail through-out the rest of the book, are simple but vital.

They are:

• Food

• Movement and the proper use of muscles

• Proper breathing

• The mind

FOOD—THE BASIC FACTOR

Every activity of the mind and the body depends to a greater or lesser extent upon the food we eat; in that sense food is the basic factor of our lives, and nutrition is the basic science.

The wrong food can be a destructive influence, causing illness and disease, affecting mental powers, shortening life.

The right food can be a safeguard against bad health, can build us up on all levels, and—as we have seen—can make a powerful contribution toward long life and long youth.

Yet almost nothing is known about eating, generally; about eating in its real sense. And this always seems to be a blind spot in the human race.

Would you turn a child, who knew only the ABCs of chemistry, loose in a labora¬tory stocked with powerful chemicals, some of them dan¬gerous, and let him play about with them just as he fancied?

He could, with no trouble at all, blow himself up, or burn or mutilate himself. He would be lucky to escape without some form of injury.

Yet when most of us sit down to lunch or dinner, in our lack of knowledge of the effects on our system of what we are putting into our stomach we are very much in the same boat as the child in the laboratory.

The effects of food chemicals may not be so spectacular or so immediate as those in the laboratory, but they are just as certain. They are governed by the laws of biochemistry.

The commonsense thing, you would think, would be to have the elementary facts of nutrition taught in all schools —and what a difference we should see in the national health in a generation, if this were done.

And centers where these facts were available could be established in almost every town and village.

At any rate, some way should be found of getting across vital, practical informa¬tion about the right use of food to adults, men as well as women.

And it should be found without delay, before the standard of national health drops any lower.

People con¬stantly ask me why no such places exist; it is one of my dreams to see such centers come into being—centers where people could be shown the vital relationship between food and health and youth and long life—where mothers would discover why Mary can't eat eggs, or Harold doesn't like sugar.

Childish likes and dislikes of certain foods may seem trivial, but often they are valuable clues to the body's workings.

These can be followed up, used to safe¬guard health, to improve “difficult” characters (which often are a result of dietary deficiencies), and even make schoolwork easier by increasing mental ability and aiding memory.

To bring all this about, the average person need not get bogged down in a mass of complicated detail; it would be enough to know the broad principles of nutrition.

After all, we have to learn something about mathematics so that we can cope with everyday affairs, but we don't have to be Einsteins.

The next time you are in a bus or train, or even reading a newspaper, look at the advertisements, and you will see what I mean about the national health standard.

I haven't actually worked out the proportion of different types of advertisement, but I think there's no doubt that those concerned with remedies for illness of some kind are way ahead numerically of the others.

Headaches, colds, coughs, fatigue, constipation, indigestion—wherever we go, we can't escape from reminders that most of us splutter, wheeze, and hiccup our way through life, and stumble along racked by rheumatism or arthritis.

Food is not a panacea for all this: don't misunderstand me as saying that. But it is the basic factor, and we should give it the attention which is its due.

STARTING-POST

At the beginning of the track which leads to our 180th birthdays, the starting-post is the balanced meal Before doing anything else, we must get into the habit of balanc-ing our meals.

That means every menu should include protein (meat, cheese, eggs, fish), carbohydrate (sugar, starch), fat, and an adequate supply of vitamins and minerals.

I will discuss these two items in greater detail later on. Fruit and vegetables must be eaten at each meal, not only for their vitamins and minerals, but because they are mainly alkaline-forming foods, necessary to preserve the alkaline-acid balance in the blood.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned be-tween-meal snacks or tea as meals.

This is because they shouldn't be meals. Bread and butter, sandwiches (anyone who has read Eat and Stay Young will know my opinion of sandwiches, at any time, in any place), cakes, at tea time or otherwise, are just an unnecessary chore for the system to cope with.

Washing down all that carbohydrate with tea doesn't help, either; it lessens the stomach's ability to cope with a mass of excess starch.

Carbohydrate is the one dietary item you can be sure most people are not short of; we all tend to eat too much starch.

And, especially as we grow older, we cannot afford to do so. We should cut down ruthlessly on starches, for the sake of health as well as looks.

Everyone needs some starch in the diet, of course, and the amount varies with the individual.

The governing factor is the way each individual's body works; the rate of metabolism varies a little with everyone. But the amount of starch in the average diet is unbelievable, and out of all proportion to the body's needs.

Here are some examples.

BREAKFAST

Even people who say they don't eat breakfast will have a couple of slices of toast or so, with jam or marmalade (in which there is sugar), and perhaps a breakfast cereal with sugar. And probably sugar in their coffee.

Admitted breakfast eaters probably have cereal with sugar, maybe sometimes fried bread with their protein dish of eggs and bacon or poached eggs on toast, plus a few slices of toast and marmalade.

MID-MORNING

The average coffee break is cruelty to stomachs—cakes, cookies, sweetened coffee or tea, most likely. Or a sand¬wich.

LUNCH

Perhaps thick soup (made with flour), potatoes with the main dish and bread, and something else made with flour, whether it's elaborate pastry or just a cake. Possibly sweet¬ened tea or coffee again.

TEA OR COFFEE BREAK

See above.

DINNER

Could be thick soup again, bread and potatoes with main dish, a pudding-type dish made with flour as for lunch, or perhaps a savory such as macaroni and cheese, often plus potatoes, and no green vegetables. Perhaps cheese and crackers afterward or pie or cake and sweetened coffee.

AT BEDTIME

Often cookies are nibbled, adding to the quota which all too often is downed during the day between meals.

I think you will agree that the amount of starchy items on the menu I have quoted is not exaggerated.

Perhaps your starch ration is lower than this, but I am sure you know many people who eat carbohydrate at every meal, and a great deal of it.

Generally, it is in the form of white flour, white sugar, and white bread, which means that the minerals and vitamins—whose function it is to help the system to deal with starch—are reduced or absent.

Con-sistently overloading the body with any kind of food it doesn't need has a result something like stopping up a sink.

The waste-disposal mechanism has more than it can deal with; substances which should have been cleared away deteriorate and produce a poisonous condition—autoin¬toxication.

This is a cordial invitation to many kinds of ills, not excluding the very-common cold.
So starch and sugar, or at least too much of them, are enemies of long life and youth, and must be used only in their right proportion to other foods. Here is a guide as to how that can be done.

BREAKFAST

An egg, or kidney (grilled), or bacon (grilled), or fish (not fried); not more than a total of two slices of whole-meal bread, butter, honey. Fresh fruit. No cereal.

MID-MORNING

Milk drink of some kind. No cookies, cakes, or sand-wiches.

LUNCH

Clear soup, tomato juice, or fresh fruit juice, if desired. Meat, fish, cheese, egg (if not eaten at breakfast); potato (two small or one large) cooked in the skin, or one slice whole-meal bread with butter. Green vegetables or salad. Fresh fruit.

AFTERNOON

Weak cafe au lait or weak tea. No cakes, cookies, bread.

EVENING MEAL

Same as at lunchtime.
In passing, here are one or two points worth remem-bering when choosing items on your menu.

The easiest way to make sure you are getting full benefit from meat, fish, cheese, and related foods (the protein part of the meal) is to have some form of protein at each meal: an egg at breakfast; meat, cheese, or fish at lunch and the same in the evening.

It isn't a good plan to miss protein at one meal and say to yourself you'll eat a double ration at the next meal.

It isn't a good plan because it isn't the body's plan, and the body always has the last word on the subject. It will not use large amounts of protein in a lump, so to speak; excess of its needs at any one time will be excreted.

The golden rule for eating protein for maximum benefit is to have a more or less regular amount at more or less regular intervals.

Another golden rule is always to eat a small amount of starch food, such as bread or potatoes, with protein.

Other¬wise some of the protein will be burned as energy—which is a wasteful way of getting energy, since the purpose of protein is the vital purpose of building, maintaining, and repairing the cells; and the formation of antibodies, which attack germs of disease, and hormones, which are neces¬sary for organic action.

Young people need plenty of good fresh meat, fish, eggs, and cheese for their growing bodies; adults also need this form of food in order to keep going.

Once it was thought that old people did not need much o£ it, but now it has been found that they do, and the standard of health in older people has improved accordingly.

Food variety is essential to health. Most foods have different vitamins and minerals in them, all necessary to important physical processes.

There are twenty amino-acids in proteins, of which at least ten must be “among those present’* in our daily diet.

It is thought that we are able to synthesize—to produce in our internal chemical factories—the other amino-acids.

Different kinds of meat, fish, cheese, and other protein foods are composed of different amino-acids (which are linked in proteins rather as paper chains are linked), so the more you can vary your meals the better, in order to include all the amino-acids in your food.

Some proteins have a better food value (or what is called biologic value) than others, because their “chains” are made up in much the same way as the protein chains of the human body are made.

Meat, eggs, and cheese are the best choices from this point of view. The protein of fish isn't so good as that of meat; milk is on the poor side for an adult's needs; the protein of leguminous vegetables, such as beans and peas, and of nuts, is not easily made use of by the human body.

However, when two proteins which by themselves would not be worth a great deal in food value are eaten together, our “inside chemistry” gets to work and produces a useful protein from two second-class ingredients.

For instance, whole-grain cereal combined with milk, or nuts with whole-meal bread, would be quite well utilized for protein requirements.

It really isn't necessary for most of us to memorize the names of the essential amino-acids, and to go around wor¬rying about whether we have had our isoleucine or our tryptophane today, so long as we make every effort to vary the menu as often as we can, and to see that protein of high biologic value figures on it. Those, as I said, are the important points to keep in mind.

The same principle applies to the minerals which we must have in order to keep on the health standard—to say nothing of keeping our youth. There are ninety-two known mineral elements.

A number of them have been found in the human body tissues; many in microscopic amounts, to which the name trace or oligo elements has been given.

Scientists think that all the minerals are pres-ent, or sho