There are people who maintain that three or four hours' sleep each night is sufficient, and that most of the race are wasting a good deal of valuable time in this manner. Examples of noted men are cited who have lived with just a few hours of sleep in the twenty-four, - but most of these men have died young.

The writer believes that at least eight hours, and in some cases more, of dreamless sleep is desirable. Sleep is the great restorer of fagged-out energy; during this period the body recuperates its strength and gets itself in trim for the wakeful period of activity.

The first hours of the morning after sleep are the best for hard mental and physical tasks. At this period the body is at the apex of its strength, and it is a shame that so many people insult it by this harmful "breakfast habit," and at once start the organs on their daily grind to eliminate the food that is stuffed into it, regardless of whether it needs food or not.

There is certainly much confusion of ideas on this question of feeding the body. Some people seem to think that the body immediately consumes the food given it and transfers it into energy. This is a serious mistake. You get no energy from the food you eat at the time you eat it, or for hours and hours afterwards, and you consume energy in the digestive process, energy that you often might better consume in other ways.

Take this as a suggestion and work it out by experimentation. If you have a large task to perform, mental or physical, do it on an empty stomach. If you want to collect your thoughts and, say, write an article that embodies the best that is in you, do it early in the morning, and before you have tasted food, excepting a copious intake of the fresh morning air. If you are to deliver a lecture and wish to have the best command of all your faculties and vocal powers, do not eat for at least five or six hours preceding this lecture.

The business world is full of mental wrecks verging on nervous prostration; nine-tenths of this comes from the bad habit of working the brain and the stomach at the same time; it can't be done successfully and without injury.

Bear this in mind: whenever you have a mental task that is a severe strain: eat very sparingly, if at all, and you will come through it admirably. The reasons are that in great mental activity the blood and vital forces rush to the head, where they are needed, and if one has food in the stomach it is apt to sour or be very improperly taken care of, or if taken care of properly, the head suffers, on the basis that one can't do two important things well at the same time.

Never eat when worried or mentally distressed.
Never Eat When Worried Or Mentally Distressed

For brain workers this question of overeating is far more important than many will concede. The hard manual worker can use up a good deal of food in exercise, though he also has a tendency to overeat, because much of the food is not what the system should have, and a greater bulk is consumed in order to get the needed elements, and also because of cultivated habit. But the office and factory, clerks and indoor workers almost invariably eat too much, especially the sedentary brain workers.

People have blindly accepted the theory that food gives strength, without understanding that it is only under certain conditions that it gives strength, and these conditions are that it be properly assimilated. Any food that is taken into the system and not assimilated gives no strength and is an element of weakness, requiring the expenditure of strength to eliminate it.

A small amount of food may give more strength than a large amount, just the same as a small amount of gasoline properly mixed with air will give a stronger power explosion than a large amount. If you run an automobile, just cover the air intake on the carburetor and see how soon the engine will foul and stop completely. Here is the secret of food combustion as well: we must learn to use more air and water and less solid food. It is really remarkable when you know how very little food will supply the body with its maximum vitality and strength.

Nature does her best to take up the oversupply of material forced upon her. With many she manufactures this into fatty tissue, and as a result we see people whose abdomens are abnormally distended and whose frame is covered with flabby tissue. Some fat is permissible, just enough to round out the figure in graceful curves, but too much is worse than none at all. Excessive fat is not an evidence of health but of disease. Most fat people could fast a couple of months with great benefit, and suffer very little, for they would simply consume the stored food of their bodies; as Upton Sinclair says, "This is hardly to be called a fast."

With most people appetite is altogether abnormal; the more they eat the more they want; they never feel satisfied until the stomach is filled to its fullest capacity, and extended far beyond its normal size. When the body is perfectly normal, just a very little food satisfies; there is no craving and no desire to fill up the stomach like a bag or a small balloon.

With many there is a constant craving for food, even a full stomach does not stop it. The system, starving for nourishment, has reached a stage of overstuffing that uses all its powers to eliminate the great gobs of food that are piled inside the stomach and from which no vital energy is assimilated. This is a serious state to get into; acute dyspepsia follows when finally the stomach refuses the food, or it causes great distress. The way out is simple enough: clean out and tone up your system by a thorough fast, and then live right when you start in eating again, eating moderately such food as is proper, and being careful to eliminate all waste regularly.

With regard to the question of sleep, by all means sleep outdoors if you can, or as nearly outdoors as you can, and this means have all the windows, and doors too, open throughout the night. Sleep at least eight hours, and sleep at night - it is the natural time to sleep; only owls and bats and skunks prowl around nights. If you have any "prowling" to do, get through with it in the early part of the evening and see to it that you are snugly tucked away in bed at least sometime before midnight. This "open all night" stunt is just another evidence of how abnormal man has become. We are certainly "going some" these days, but we are headed straight for an early grave; it's time to put on the brakes. Remember this: most any fool can run an automobile at high speed over rough roads for a short while, but it isn't good for the machine, nor can one negotiate such roads as well in the night as in the daytime.

You may have to run your body over rough roads; if so, it needs all the more care that you may pull it through without injury. This body is indeed a wonderful machine, but the way some people run their bodies it is really a mystery to me that they last as long as they do.

If it's worth while to live one hundred years in full possession of one's bodily powers and mental activity, it's worth paying the price in obedience to nature's laws - at any rate, it's the only way that will accomplish the trick, so you can pay your money and take your choice.