Deep Breathing is as Necessary for the Proper

Thus we see that deep breathing, by favoring absorption, promotes the nourishment of the body will assist in building tissue, in fact.

Oxygen is a vital necessity for the body, and it is necessary to absorb a large quantity for the actual needs of the system, while all absorbed over the quantity means added nutrition. Now, deep, or diaphragmatic breathing, infallibly increases the lung capacity, so that the possibility for absorption of oxygen is increased, and health and strength promoted.

Deep breathing is as necessary for the proper absorption and assimilation of nutrition as the selection of a well- balanced diet. It has saved thousands of lives, and is a factor in promoting health that cannot be disregarded.

"Order is Heaven's first law," and nowhere is this law better exemplified than in the human body. Order, or regularity, is an essential for success in human affairs--moral, mental, or physical; but especially in the latter. The successful conduct of large business organizations is only possible by regularity in the performance of every detail of duty.

If this be so when only physical results are involved, how much more so is it where vital interests are at stake? The human body is a wonderfully complex piece of mechanism, and if left to itself or rather to natural guidance, its manifold functions are performed with unfailing regularity; and regularity in function means health-- irregularity, disease.

Mark the rhythmic regularity of respiration, or of the heart's contractions! Long continued regularity begets habit, which is a form of automatism; hence the necessity of regularity in action along fixed lines, and in consonance with physiological law, that good habits only may be formed.

Good habits are absolutely essential to health, which is equivalent to saying that regularity in living is an imperative necessity to that end. Regularity in rising and retiring; regularity in eating and drinking; regularity in exercise, all are equally important.

Not only does this regularity of conduct conduce to the attainment and maintenance of perfect health, but it enables the individual to accomplish more within the limits of the day, partly by economizing time, and partly by the added vigor due to improved health.

First, regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, namely, regulating the minimum period to be devoted to sleep. There is much conflict of opinion as to the amount of sleep necessary for the average adult.

We have in mind an old saying which runs as follows: "Six hours' sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool." This is somewhat arbitrary, and, moreover, is not in harmony with physiological law. In the first place, no hard and fast rule can be laid down that will cover all cases. Apart from the difference of sex, there are temperamental conditions which vary with every case. We are decidedly of the opinion that eight hours' sleep is necessary for the adult individual.

It has been affirmed by some authorities that the more the individual sleeps the longer he will live, which is a perfectly rational claim, in view of the fact that night is Nature's repair time, when she is busy at work replacing the ravages committed by wear and tear during the day. It is a well known fact that nearly all growth takes place during sleep.

Again, it is a fact not generally known that the heart receives no nourishment during the period of contraction, owing to the pressure upon the arteries which supply it with nutriment.

It is only during the infinitesimal pause between the contractions that these arteries can carry blood to the heart tissue; hence during sleep the heart- beats differ from those of our waking hours, being fewer in number, and with a more decided pause between. Now, the heart being to the body what the mainspring is to a watch, the necessity of affording it ample time for recuperation becomes apparent.