Quotes About Health

The bath, except for medical reasons when absolutely necessary, is not only superfluous, but very prejudicial to men," the French doctor Théophraste Renaudot warned in 1655. "Bathing fills the head with vapors. It is the enemy of the nerves and ligaments, which it loosens, in such a way that many a man never suffers from gout except after bathing.

struck fear into medieval hearts—hot baths, which had a dangerously moistening and relaxing effect on the body. Once heat and water created openings through the skin, the plague could easily invade the entire body. For the next two hundred years, whenever the plague threatened, the cry went out: "Bathhouses and bathing, I beg you to shun them or you will die.

For the seventeenth century, clean linen was not a substitute for washing the body with water—it was better than that, safer, more reliable and based on scientific principles. White linen, learned men believed, attracted and absorbed sweat. As one wrote, with mystifying confidence, "We understand why linen removes the perspiration from our bodies, because the sweat is oleaginous or salty, it impregnates these dead plants [the

decade ago, the editorial writers at a large Canadian newspaper were amused when the germ-conscious editor-in-chief urged them to write an editorial against shaking hands. (He suggested crossing your arms and nodding instead.) The editorial never appeared. It's doubtful that the editor's suggestion would strike them as outlandish or exaggerated today.

By the 1880s, however, something happened that no one could have predicted. The United States-rising, pushing and still raw in many ways—had become the Western country that most embraced the gospel of hygiene.

children most likely to develop allergies and asthma were only children who lived in cities, did not go to daycare, had no pets, washed their hands more than five times a day and bathed more than once a day. The list of diseases possibly contracted in this way came to include rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis and even heart disease.

According to Vincent Lam and Colin Lee, Toronto emergency room doctors and the authors of The Flu Pandemic and You, those straightforward, low-tech practices are about the only hygienic steps that might protect us in the next epidemic or pandemic.

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

I'm terrible with my workout regime and following it strictly. I'm terrible with a healthy diet and following it strictly. I'm terrible on the weekends about getting up at reasonable hours and all of those things. But, when it comes to my work and the discipline it takes to get to work on time - I hate unprofessionalism.

She wasn't even sick, not really. She'd just had a bad reaction to a vaccine. What had been a theory at school in the morning had solidified into fact, at least within my own self.

It's possible that they had a slight allergic reaction to a preservative in the vaccine.

I am fussy, about my diet and straining my voice. I know, sounds a bit over the top. But I'm not as bad as I used to be. These days I don't drink alcohol for five days before a show - very dehydrating for the vocal cords, and all that acid reflux. I used to ban it for a fortnight. Nightmare.

I do follow a version of the Dukan diet, but I don't follow it to the extreme so a lot of fish and vegetables. If I want chocolate I'll let myself have a bit of chocolate in moderation.

The entire economy of the Western world is built on things that cause cancer.

To be too conscious is an illness — a real thoroughgoing illness.

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

Myrhvold, for instance, drank at least a six-pack a day of Diet Pepsi. He was, friends joked, "living proof there's no lethal dose for NutraSweet." Navigating

All who have come to me must have enema each day.

Living in Seattle is like being married to a beautiful woman who's sick all the time.

So many people live in fear, fear of losing what they have, the little job that provides their daily bread, the wife they have managed to acquire, fear for their health, fear on account of their children, fear at the thought of old age.

Some of his colleagues, as he was well aware, even went so far as to say he dishonoured the medical profession. As though it could be dishonoured! There is pain and sickness, agreed. But pain and sickness represent money, and you need money to live, to feel well and look after others. That is the inevitable cycle. When it comes to money, it is difficult to strike a happy mean and stick to it. You either make too much money, or too little. It is safer to make too much.

What saves doctors' reputations is the fact that many illnesses are benign and that people can go on living with a large number of others, the so-called chronic ones, which destroy only slowly.

Dietary patterns are set at a very early age—somewhere between four and eight years old. The research shows that children who have established a healthy diet are healthier in the longer range and less likely to develop cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and obesity.