Physical Exercise
[
Testimonies for the Church 2:528-533
(1870).]
Another precious blessing is proper exercise. There are many
indolent, inactive ones who are disinclined to physical labor or exercise
because it wearies them. What if it does weary them? The reason
why they become weary is that they do not strengthen their muscles
by exercise, therefore they feel the least exertion. Invalid women and
girls are better pleased to busy themselves with light employment, as
crocheting, embroidering, or making tatting, than to engage in physical
labor. If invalids would recover health, they should not discontinue
physical exercise; for they will thus increase muscular weakness and
general debility. Bind up the arm and permit it to remain useless, even
for a few weeks, then free it from its bondage, and you will discover
that it is weaker than the one you have been using moderately during
the same time. Inactivity produces the same effect upon the whole
muscular system. The blood is not enabled to expel the impurities as
it would if active circulation were induced by exercise.
When the weather will permit, all who can possibly do so ought
to walk in the open air every day, summer and winter. But the cloth-
ing should be suitable for the exercise, and the feet should be well
protected. A walk, even in winter, would be more beneficial to the
health than all the medicine the doctors may prescribe. For those who
can walk, walking is preferable to riding. The muscles and veins are
enabled better to perform their work. There will be increased vitality,
which is so necessary to health. The lungs will have needful action;
for it is impossible to go out in the bracing air of a winter’s morning
without inflating the lungs.
[53]
Riches and idleness are thought by some to be blessings indeed.
But when some persons have acquired wealth, or inherited it unexpect-
edly, their active habits have been broken up, their time is unemployed,
they live at ease, and their usefulness seems at an end; they become
restless, anxious, and unhappy, and their lives soon close. Those who
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