Go back one hundred and fifty years ago and keeping healthy wasn’t that much of a problem. Back in the 1800’s most of us would have been working in one of these three places;
- A Farm as manual worker.
- In a factory or mill
- In service at a stately home and the estate.
All of these would have involved physical labour or being stood around for long hours. Added to this the diet of the time would not have been as highly calorific or sugar and preservative laden as our food is now. There would have been nowhere near the same amount of choice either with the basic staples of bread and vegetables making up most of the diet. Meat would have come from cheap cuts and what could be trapped in the field, they ate a lot more rabbit and hare in those days, Chicken would have been a rare and expensive treat. The hours were much longer as well, 12 hour days were not uncommon and you walked the miles to work or took a handy hay cart. You may also have had an allotment or strip of land for your own to work on, once you’d finished the shift in the field or factory, of course. So, whilst they may have been thinner and fitter, the fact they worked in dangerous environments, had no breaks, had no access to any real medical care and if they became unfit to work they were basically shunned by society and left to starve rather balances things out. Mental health and sexual health care were non-existent. At least now we have some support networks and evenHome StI Kits London that you can have at home by providers like www.bexleysexualhealth.org/home_sti_kits to ensure you are ok.
That’s not to suggest that we change our working practices to theirs but in our desk bound sedentary society it seems like we have gone the other way. We are becoming more obese and unfit due to the fact that for the most part our lives both social and working are sedentary. Therefore, apart from the obvious lack of social, political and working rights there might be something said for how ancestors are conducted themselves. The only way that we can copy this is by considering gym membership, see if we can get a standing desk, take lots of long walks, ride or walk to work, take up a sport or, as they used to do have an allotment or garden.
