Eight days a week

365 days is not enough

HOW TO LIVE
365 DAYS A YEAR
by John A Schindler,M.D.
------------------------

HOW MANY of your last 365 days were ones in which you felt that
you were truly alive?  If you are like most of us, you had at
least a few such days--enough to make you wish there were more.

     Most people, as a doctor knows all too well, put in many
days when they feel too tired, too worried or too disagreeable
to get the full zest out of the adventure of living.  The purpose
of this book is to show beyond question that most such "lost"
days are unnecessary, and to show that it is possible to make
each of the next 365 days one of your "good" days.  To do this,
however, we must first understand what causes the unnecessary
"bad" days.

     A patient almost always comes to the doctor because of some
physical pain.  He is seldom aware how often these physical
symptoms are caused by his failure to control his emotions.  But
doctors now know that the problems of more than 50 percent of
those seeking medical aid have their roots in badly handled
emotions.

     For instance, the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans found that
74 percent of 500 consecutive patients admitted for gastro-
intestinal diseases were actually suffering from illness caused
by the emotions.  The Yale University Out-Patient Medical
Department has reported that emotional stress contributed to the
ills of 76 percent of all the patients coming to that clinic.

               How Do Emotions Affect Our Health?

     William James has defined emotion as "a state of mind that
manifests itself by sensible changes in the body."  With every
emotion changes are taking place in muscles, in blood vessels,
in the viscera, in the endocrine glands.  These changes and the
mental state that accompanies them are the emotion.  Without
these bodily changes, there would be no emotion.

     With minor exceptions, all emotions belong in one of two
groups: the unpleasant emotions, which harmfully overstimulate
any organ or muscle or one of the endocrine glands. (These
emotions include anger, anxiety, fear, discouragement, grief,
dissatisfaction.)  Opposed to them are pleasant emotions which
create an optimal stimulation in the body, one neither too
extreme nor too weak.  Among these are hope, joy, courage,
equanimity, affection, agreeableness.

     When we have learned to control the unpleasant emotions and
to encourage the pleasant ones, we have come a long way toward
learning how to live a happier and probably a longer life.

     The unpleasant emotions have definite physical effects on
the body.  The moment you become angry, for example, the muscles
at the outlet of the stomach squeeze down so tightly that nothing
leaves the stomach, and the entire digestive tract becomes
spastic; many people have severe abdominal pains either during
or after a fit of anger.  At the same time the number of blood
cells increases greatly, and the blood clots more quickly than
usual.  The heart rate goes up markedly, often to 180 or 200, or
higher, and stay there until the anger has passed.  The blood
pressure rises steeply, from a normal of 130 or so to 230 or
more, often with dire results.  More than one person has
developed a stroke during a fit of anger because his blood
pressure rose so high that he "blew" a blood vessel in his brain. 
Also, in anger, the coronary arteries in the heart squeeze down
hard enough to produce angina pectoris, or, as happens fairly
frequently, a fatal coronary occlusion.

     The great English physiologist John Hunter, who had the
uncomfortable combination of a ready temper and a bad set of
coronary arteries, always said that the first rascal who got him
really mad would kill him.  The "rascal" finally appeared at a
medical meeting and made him so angry he dropped dead of a heart
attack.

     Most emotionally induced illness, however, does not come as
the result of one large emotion.  Far more often it is the result
of the monotonous drip, drip of seemingly unimportant emotions,
the everyday run of anxieties, fears, discouragements, longings.

     A few years ago two Cornell psychologists, H. S. Liddell and
A. U. Moore, tried an interesting experiment on sheep.  They tied
a small wire to a sheep's leg and, as the animal dragged it about
the field, sent slight electric shocks through it.  The sheep
merely twitched its leg and went right on eating, no matter how
often the shocks were repeated.

     The two investigators then tried ringing a bell for ten
seconds before they gave the shock.  The jolt was no stronger
than before, but now when the sheep heard the bell it stopped
eating and waited apprehensively for the coming shock. 
Monotonous repetition of this bell-shock apprehension soon
induced functional illness in every sheep on which it was tried. 
The sheep would first quit eating, then stop walking.  Next it
would fail to stay on its feet and finally would begin to have
difficulty in breathing.  Then the experiment was stopped or the
sheep might have died.  An important finding of the experiment--
for it bears on our own need for regular relaxation--was the
discovery that if the monotonous repetition of apprehension was
interrupted at intervals, the sheep would not develop functional
illness so often or so seriously.

                Muscle Tension as a Cause of Pain

     Unpleasant emotions are commonly accompanied by tightness
in the skeletal muscles and the muscles of the internal organs. 
If these muscle-tensing emotions are continued long enough, or
if they are monotonously repeated, the muscles involved begin to
hurt, causing what we have called muscular rheumatism or
fibrositis.  Tense muscles are one of the most common sources of
the general aches and pains we experience more or less
constantly.

     Only in the 1940s did we learn the extent to which emotional
tension can bring on muscular pains.  During World War I, a
certain percentage of the boys in the trenches developed
fibrositis.  It was thought to be due to the wet and miserable
living conditions.  But in World War II, almost exactly the same
percentage of men in combat developed fibrositis.  And the
percentage was the same whether they were fighting in the cold,
wet Aleutian Islands or in hot, dry North Africa.

     It was found, furthermore, that the incidence of fibrositis
increased steadily as the boys moved toward the front. 
Eventually it was determined that an emotion was often
responsible--the emotion a person has when he is called upon to
do something he would much rather avoid.

     In this situation he involuntarily steels himself and
tightens certain muscles--very often those of the neck and
shoulders.  This tension also occurs, of course, in individuals
in civilian life who must constantly meet situations they would
rather avoid.  If such situations are acute enough, or if they
are of long enough duration, pain is eventually produced. 
Eighty-five percent of the patients complaining of a pain in the
back of the head, radiating down the neck, have such pain as a
result of emotional tension.  Another site of such pain is the
pectoral muscles of the chest.  If the pain is in the left chest
a person may become alarmed; and if some uncertain doctor then
murmurs, "You might have a little heart trouble," he is apt to
be off on a long, emotionally induced illness.

     Fibrositis is an exceedingly common cause of pain.  Most
people will have it at some time or other, and some people are
subject to it all the time.  Many of them fear they have cancer,
or a crippling rheumatism.  But fibrositis never becomes
crippling; it becomes incapacitating only if you let it.  It is
not serious; merely a confounded nuisance.

     The stomach is one of the organs par excellence for the
manifestation of emotions.  When our world is going along well,
we have a good appetite.  However, when things do not go well,
we suddenly find that we have lost our appetite.  If, then,
something good should happen, our appetite is back right away.

     When the stomach muscles tighten because of certain
emotions, the feeling is that of a lump in the upper abdomen;
some people describe it as a "stone."  When the stomach muscles
squeeze down really heard, a pain is produced, sometimes a very
severe one which resembles the pain produced by an ulcer.  For
even if one has an ulcer, many experts believe it is not the
ulcer that hurts but the painful contraction of muscles next to
it.  Fully 50 percent of the patients who complain of an ulcer-
like pain are found to have merely an emotional muscle pain of
the stomach.

     The same kind of painful spasm occurs in the 28 feet of
intestine that lie beyond the stomach, but most especially in the
part known as the colon.  If this spasm happens in the colon in
the upper right-hand portion of the abdomen, it will produce a
pain very similar to a gallstone colic.  Fifty percent of the
people we see with fairly typical "gall bladder attacks" turn out
to have normal gall bladders.

     If the emotional spasm occurs in the right lower quadrant
of the abdomen, it will look for all the world like an attack of
appendicitis.  Even a very smart doctor may be unable to make a
positive diagnosis, especially in children (in whom this kind of
thing is apt to occur).  Very often, to be safe, the surgeon will
open the abdomen, only to find a normal appendix and a bowel
squeezed down so tight that it is blanched white.

     There are so many emotional disturbances of the colon that
all sorts of terms have been evolved for them like "spastic
colon," "irritable colon," "nonspecific ulcerative colitis," and
many others, all of them merely synonyms for "emotional colon."
     
     Every muscle in the body is influenced by the emotions,
especially those in the walls of the blood vessels.  All but the
very smallest vessels have such muscles, and the moderate-sized
ones lying inside or outside the skull are highly sensitive to
emotional stimuli.  As these vessels contract emotionally,
headache is often produced, both the common headache and the more
severe type we know as migraine.  The emotional excitant may be
some deep-seated trouble which the person may try to hide even
from himself.  But the emotions behind most headaches are easy
enough to spot.

     Blood vessels manifesting emotions do even more remarkable
things.  Fully 30 percent of the skin trouble in these United
States is what the dermatologists call neurodermatitis.  A
neurodermatitis can occur anywhere on the body.  In the skin
involved, the small blood vessels in the second layer are
constantly squeezing down in emotional manifestation.  Every time
they do so a small amount of serum is extruded through the thin
walls of the vessel.  As this continues, an appreciable amount
of serum accumulates in the tissues.  First, the skin gets
slightly brawny, then red.  Soon there is enough serum under
pressure to force its way to the surface, and one has the
weeping, scaling, crusting and itching of a full-blown case of
neurodermatitis.

             How Emotional Over-breathing Affects You

     There is another set of symptoms, emotionally induced, that
is especially common, and that produces severe apprehension,
usually groundless, in the people who experience it.  This set
of symptoms is known medically as hyperventilation.  The chance
is that you have experienced it some time or other.  It comes
from breathing too deeply, or breathing too fast, or both.

     You have noticed that if you become acutely disturbed you
will breathe faster than usual.  Normally, most of us breathe
between 16 and 18 times a minute at rest.  If we were to increase
our rate to 22 or 23 times a minute, we ourselves, or those near
us, would probably not notice the difference, but our bodies
would soon notice the increase.  For when we breathe fast the
lungs take more carbon dioxide from the blood than the body
creates.  And as the level of carbon dioxide in the blood drops,
things begin to happen.  First there is a crawling sensation
under the skin; next comes a numbness of the fingers and hands;
gradually the numbness becomes more pronounced, until there is
a sensation of needles pricking the skin all over.  Meanwhile
other symptoms appear.  The heart starts to race; there is a
trembling feeling, and lightheadedness, or even fainting, occurs.

     One of the most interesting things about hyperventilation
is that it occurs most commonly in our sleep.  If you watch a
sleeping person, especially someone who is in a troublesome life
situation, you will see him breathe more rapidly and deeply for
a time, and then lapse into quiet breathing, only to repeat the
whole cycle over again.

     Our minds are never at rest; we are dreaming all through the
night; and when we sleep, the usual censor--common sense--is not
around.  If someone says something nasty to disturb us during the
day, that person may turn up in our dreams at the head of a band
of Indians chasing us toward a precipitous cliff.  In our sleep,
we react emotionally as though we really were being driven toward
catastrophe.  We roll and toss--and we hyperventilate.(This is
a common cause of leg cramps at night.)

     About once every week during my years of medical practice,
I have had to see someone, usually about 2 a.m., who woke up
during hyperventilation--probably just at the point where he was
about to be hurled over the cliff.  His heart is racing and his
hands are numb.  Naturally, he thinks he is dying of heart
failure.

                   Maybe It's Not Your Nerves

     Everyone knew for a long time that the nervous system had,
in some way, a great deal to do with emotionally induced illness. 
Then along came Dr. Hans Selye of Montreal, and today a
tremendous and amazing new chapter--a new understanding--is being
written on the subject.  We know today that the endocrine glands
have as much to do with emotional symptoms as the nervous system
has.  What is more important, the endocrine effects of the
emotions far outweigh the nerve effects.  So much so that it
would be closer to the truth to say, "It's my endocrines," rather
than, "It's my nerves."

     Dr. Selye started with investigations of the pituitary
gland.

     Located inside the cranium, on the underside of the brain,
the pituitary is cradled in a complete bowl of bone, protected
against almost any conceivable injury.  One might surmise from
this that the pituitary is about the most important organ we
have.  And it is.

     The pituitary is only about the size and shape of an
overgrown pea.  Yet it is the master regulator of the entire
body.  It produces an amazing variety of hormones--substances
which are carried in the blood and which act on other parts of
the body.  There is one pituitary hormone that raises blood
pressure, another that makes smooth muscles contract, one that
inhibits the kidneys from producing urine, one that stimulates
the kidneys to make more urine.  Then there is a whole group of
pituitary hormones that regulate the other endocrine glands of
the body.  These other glands produce many more hormones to
regulate just about everything that goes on in our bodies.

     The pituitary is like a key industry that works quietly but
efficiently night and day making certain commodities that are
absolutely essential to the well-being of our body.  Not only
does it control our physiology in time of peace and quiet but it
becomes the key defense plant if the body is threatened in any
way.

     All threats to the body--from bacterial invasion to
emotional strain--Dr. Selye called "stressors."  He found that
unpleasant emotions, which can stimulate any or all of the many
hormones, are particularly effective stressors.

     By his experiments Dr. Selye has shown that prolonged bad
emotions can produce a sickness such as is produced by a low-
grade, chronic infection in the tonsils or in the infected root
of a tooth.  We have learned to snip out infected tonsils; the
trick is to get rid of our equally harmful emotions.  Fortunately
nature has given us an ally.

               The Healing Power of Good Emotions

     Each of us has in his own system the greatest known power
for good health.  This is the power of good emotions.  The only
medicines whose healing ability is comparable to that of good
emotions are the antibiotics such as penicillin, and ACTH and
cortisone.
     
     The body knows the secret of optimal hormone balance.  We
do not.  But there is one way you have of achieving optimal
hormone balance.  That is to provide your body with the stimulus
of the pleasant and cheerful group of emotions.  For the
"medicinal" value of the good emotions cannot be overestimated. 
They have two general effects.  First, they replace the bad
emotions which were producing stress effects; and secondly, they
produce their own pituitary effect, which is an optimal balance
of endocrine function.  It is this optimal balance which produces
the state which makes us say, "Gee, I feel good!"

     Once we know that healthful living is largely a matter of
having the right kind of emotions, it becomes clear how important
it is to train and handle them properly.  A cheerful and pleasant
disposition--that is to say, happy fundamental emotions--should
be the central aim in the raising of children.  Give them this,
and they will have more than they can ever get in any other way.

     If you've grown up without a naturally happy disposition,
it is not too late to cultivate one.  It calls for the constant
practice of these simple principles:

     1. Keep Yourself Responsive to Simple Things. They are
always near at hand and readily accessible. Don't get in the
habit of requiring the unusual for your pleasure.  Life becomes
a tremendously interesting adventure if you learn to live, for
instance, like the great naturalists W.C.English, John Muir or
Henry Thoreau, occupied with the constant, wonderful world of
colour, sound, smell and sight that is available every single
instant.  If you tune yourself to it as these men did, your every
moment is a walk down an avenue of ready-made enjoyment.

     I met W.C.English when I was in college; he was already in
his 60's, and he enjoyed everything around him.  He needed no
automobile to travel.  He could see more afoot.  And in a mile
afoot, he found infinitely more wonder than most people find in
10,000 miles on wheels.  He knew every plant, every bush, every
tree.  He knew the places where the pink lady's-slipper grew,
where to find the fringed avenues, and how to trick a fox into
showing where he lived.  He knew about geology, fossils and
caves.

     He was not a pedant, he was just a happy man, enjoying a
world in which everything interested him.  I have seen him spend
a whole afternoon watching a jumping spider.  When he needed
money he lectured or wrote an article.  But he had no great need
for money, because he was richer than Henry Ford and John
D.Rockefeller combined.  We can't all be W.C.Englishes.  But we
can cultivate the ability to find our major and constant
enjoyments in the common things which are always at hand.

     2. Avoid Watching for a Knock in Your Motor. Among the
world's most miserable people are those who can't get over the
idea that something is terribly wrong with their health.  They
are forever listening for a possible knock in their motors, a
grinding in their differentials.  They belong to a huge
organization, the "Symptom-a-Day Club," in which it is required
that the members start the day by waking up and immediately
asking themselves, "Where am I sick today?"

     It is an interesting physiological fact that if any of us
stop to ask, "Where do I hurt?  We can by self-examination find
some place where we do hurt.  All one needs to do to turn one of
these insignificant, unimportant pains into something genuinely
severe is to keep one's attention on the pain.  It soon grows ten
times as severe.

     One of my patients, an executive who was always under
terrific pressure, frequently felt a tightness in his chest.  As
long as he was intent on his job, he paid no attention to it. 
But during a routine physical examination he mentioned the
tightness to the company doctor, who told him that he probably
had early coronary heart disease.  From then on the poor fellow
was licked; he thought of his heart all the time and became
apprehensive whenever the tightness appeared.  He  became unable
to work and was a complete invalid for a year.  It took numerous
examinations by the best heart specialists in the country, and
very intensive assurative therapy, to get him back to his work. 
Finally, he could again evaluate the tightness for what it was--a
manifestation of the harrying and worrying that were a part of
his job.

     To avoid such morbid concern with health, have a sensible
doctor make a thorough physical examination every year--or
oftener, if something turns up to cast any doubt in your mind. 
Then, having assured yourself that you are reasonably sound, make
nothing further of it.

     The group in my part of the country who have emotionally
induced illness least often are the farmers' wives with families
of nine or ten who, in addition to their housework, also help out
on the farm.  Their minds are too occupied with work to allow
them to worry, and they are too busy taking care of other people
to think of themselves.  One of these wonderful human beings told
me one time when I asked her whether she ever got tired (one of
the most common functional symptoms),"Son, 25 years ago I taught
myself never to ask myself that question."  And that,
incidentally, is the best cure for that kind of tiredness.

     3. Learn to Like Work. The chances are that, like most of
the rest of us, you have to work for a living.  As with every
other necessary factor in your life, you might just as well like
it and avoid making trouble for yourself by not liking it.

     A person who has convinced himself that he doesn't like work
has a monotonous repetition of unpleasant emotions while he is
working, and he is well on the way to an emotionally induced
illness.  I used to suggest to a person who didn't like the type
of work he was doing that he find himself a job he did like.  But
I found that often such a person didn't like the second job any
better than the first.  The root of the matter was that he just
didn't like work.

     If a person likes to work, and has learned the simple joy
of doing something well, if he feels pleased at producing
something of value to society, he will be generating pleasant
emotions all the time he is working.  Furthermore, the man who
has more than enough work to keep himself occupied doesn't have
the time to "think."  "Thinking" usually means thumbing mentally
over troubles.  Work is therapy.  Liking it is a wonderful guard
against emotional ills.

     4. Like People and Join the Human Enterprise. It is
surprising how many people with emotionally induced illness
dislike practically everyone, from the President, whom they have
never met, to their next-door neighbour, whom they wish they had
never met.  Their immaturity has isolated them; the extent of
their cooperation in human society is limited to what they can
get out of it.  Next, on finding themselves isolated, they begin
to pity themselves and to feel persecuted.  They become
hypochondriacal, develop deep-seated inferiorities and lead an
unnecessarily miserable life.

     One of the finest sides to living is wanting to share
actively in the human enterprise, to add a bit to the sum total
of the effort the human race is making to get out of the jungle. 
Entering consciously into this human enterprise, feeling oneself
a part of the community, is an important element in maturity and
in general good health.

     5. Get the Habit of Cheerfulness. There are few moments that
won't benefit from a sally of humour or a cheerful lift.  Yet,
some people regularly complain about everything, griping at the
taxes and the political opposition and lambasting everyone under
them.  Frequently the gripers wind up in the doctor's office. 
But I know many executives who carry on under tremendous pressure
as affably and as kindly as a girl skipping down the street. 
They are the boys who get along and stay out of the hospitals.

     It is particularly important in family life to develop the
habit of pleasant conversation.  Do not, for your own, your
children's or your digestion's sake, make the family meal a
recitation of troubles, anxieties, fears, warnings, accusations. 
And what is more important, don't let the feeling pervade your
family that everyone is so taken for granted that a pleasantness
or kind word is unnecessary.  The crabbed note that clangs daily
in so many families is a good foundation for many of the neurotic
characteristics of later life.

     6. Meet Your Problems With Decision. In the multitude of
practical problems you must meet every day, you cannot always be
right.  So it is better to allow yourself a few mistakes than to
keep milling and turning every little problem over and over. 
Such indecisive stewing will certainly create emotionally induced
illness.  The best rule to follow, therefore, is to make your
decisions without a long huffing and puffing. Decide what you are
going to do about a problem and then quit thinking about it.

     7. Make the Present Moment an Emotional Success. Some people
live on an expectancy basis, always looking for something in the
future, completely losing the only value they have--that which
is in the present moment.  The boy in high school anticipates
college; in college, he anticipates the joy that will be his when
he gets an engineering job.  When he gets his engineering job,
he believes that joy will come when he marries Mary and has a
home; and so he goes on...anticipating.

     There finally comes a time when anticipation is no longer
rosy.  That point is accompanied by a tremendous readjustment of
thinking, values and motives.  That is the point where the
individual begins to look old and beaten.  Anticipation is
shifted into thinking about the glories of the past (which are
past).

     Actually, the only moment we ever live is the present
moment.  It is the only time we ever have to be happy. 
Naturally, we have to plan for the future, but too much looking
ahead entails fear and apprehension.  The best insurance for a
satisfactory future is to handle the present hour properly, do
a good job of living now, be effective in your work, your
thinking, your helpfulness to other people.  The future will turn
out to be as good as your present if you keep on handling the
present moments correctly.  That's an important way to be sure
that you are living the full 365 days of the year.(#)

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