Water, air and sunshine, the three greatest hygienic agents which can change our lives, are free and within the reach of us all.
"Twelve years ago," said Walt Whitman, "I came to Camden to die. But every day I went into the country and bathed in the sunshine, lived with the birds and squirrels, and played in the water with the fishes. I received my health from Nature."
"It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick," said Florence Nightingale, "that second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a closed room, what most hurts them is a dark room; and that it is not only light, but direct sunshine they want."
The Health Research Forum is a not-for-profit organization devoted to discussion of health issues. It reports that the cost of disease caused by insufficient exposure to sunlight resulting in a deficiency of vitamin D is estimated to be billions of pounds per year in Britain. The Forum has published a new report called Sunlight Robbery: Health benefits of sunlight are denied by current public health policy in the UK. Oliver Gillie, a former medical correspondent on the Sunday Times and ex-medical editor of the Independent, has written the report based on a summary of research accumulating over the last 10 years which provides solid evidence in hundreds of scientific papers. Lives can be changed with this new understanding of vitamin D which explains how deficiency of the vitamin can cause so many different diseases.
"Sunlight," says Dr. L. W. Curtis, in "Health Culture," "has much to do in keeping air in a healthy condition. No plant can grow in the dark, neither can man remain healthy in a dark, ill-ventilated room. When the first asylum for the blind was erected in Massachusetts, the committee decided to save expenses by not having any windows. They reasoned that, as the patients could not see, there was no need of any light. It was built without windows, but ventilation was well provided for and the poor sightless patients were domiciled in the house. But things did not go well: one after another began to sicken, and great languor fell upon them; they felt distressed and restless, craving something, they hardly knew what. After two had died and all were ill, the committee decided to have windows. The sunlight poured in, and the white faces recovered their color; their flagging energies and depressed spirits revived, and health was restored.
The sun, making all living things to grow, exerts its happiest influence in cheering the mind of man and making his heart glad. If a man has sunshine in his soul he will go on his way rejoicing; content to look forward if under a cloud, honoring his occupation, whatever it may be. Even old clothes look respectable by the way he wears them. Not only is he happy himself, but he gives happiness to others, changing their lives.
How a man's face shines when illuminated by a great moral motive and his manner, too, is touched with the grace of light. A lack of sunlight, on the other hand, is considered one of the primary causes of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a serious form of the "winter blues". SAD occurrence is more prevalent in locations further from the tropics, and most of the treatments (other than prescription drugs) involve replicating sunlight via sunlamps tuned to specific wavelengths of light or full-spectrum bulbs.
"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches," said Emerson, "and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom."
"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness," said Carlyle; "altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous--a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."
We need to renew our cheerful dispositions as frequently as possible by spending time in fresh air and sunshine in order to thrive with the changes of every day life.
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