Why Do We Grow Aged?
We age directly in accordance with the lives we lead. You can bend a wire back and forth a number of times at the same point without breaking it, but eventually it will break. Just so with the human body. You can use each part of it for its own purposes a number of times, but eventually the break will come. Or, you can fail to make a part of it perform its regular functions, and it will die—the break will come. The human body is the most wonderful machine in the world, but even it will eventually wear out. Every time you move your arm, leg or some other part of your body, you destroy some tissues. The body replenishes and builds up those tissues again for a certain time. When you bend a joint in your body, the body oils the joint naturally, but as you grow older, or rather, as you use the different parts of your body more and more, it brings nearer always the time, when the body cannot, of its own accord, build up again the tissues you have destroyed. That is why some people become very old at forty and others are still comparatively young at seventy. It requires a great deal of care and attention and the elimination of all abuse of the body to keep us young when we are old. The use of drink, lack of sufficient sleep and other abuses prevent the body from restoring the tissues which have been destroyed. Worry and sorrow age us very rapidly, because these things affect the nerves. If the nerves are not quiet we cannot get any rest and without rest we grow old very rapidly.