Jittery nerves in a woman do not please a man, regardless o£ whatever youthful charms she may possess. Although a young girl, or a woman in her twenties or early thirties, may get by without much poise and with nervous gestures that irritate the onlooker, the older she grows the more these undesirable nervous habits detract from the charm of a woman who wishes to retain an illusion of youth past her fortieth birthday.

Healthy nerves are fully as necessary in a man. Yet I choose to address this chapter directly to you ladies, although what I say to you holds equally good for the nervous system in past-forty male bodies.

A planned diet can give you the healthy nerves so vital to the charm and poise of a lovely woman. Notice, please, that I said a planned diet, and not a "starvation" diet. For that is exactly the type of unwise diet on which some two-thirds of the American women today are trying to exist—either deliberately or unknowingly—and at the same time appear young and charming. The nervous system that is starved of protein and fat has no other choice except to become "jit­tery." You must remember that a thin layer of fat is normal at all times under the skin to form a protection for your nerves (muscles, too). And you must also keep in mind that protein forms the structure and living matter of the cells that make up your nerves.

An indifferent diet, or a starvation reducing diet that neglects protein and natural fats, is a diet designed to give you the unwelcome gift of jangled nerves. So please, for the sake o£ your charm and your poise, give up any unwise diet you may now be following, and substitute instead the tested, wholly safe, highly effective, protein reducing diet supplied for you in Part II.

Since all women and men past the age of forty must un­dergo the climacteric with its general disturbance of the endo­crine glands and their hormone output (see Chapter 8), liberal amounts of high-protein foods are urgently needed at this time of life to avoid the "middle-aged nerves" which can lessen your personal efficiency and alienate your social world.

Your endocrine glands need high-protein foods to produce their nerve-calming hormones. Yet it is at this very period that a woman most often chooses to follow some fad reducing diet. A disturbance in the thyroid or pituitary glands which commonly attends the menopause may cause her to begin gaining weight. This usually makes her all the more eager to adopt the first fad diet that comes her way. Seldom will your ardent diet-follower stop to question whether her new weight-control regimen is well balanced; whether it contains enough fat, protein, thiamin and other B-vitamins, calcium and magnesium to keep her nerves, glands, muscles and vital organs properly nourished.

And then, when as a result of her woefully substandard diet, she becomes irritable, peevish and so jittery she drives herself and all those around her into a frenzy, it's all too easy to blame her disordered nervous condition on the ' 'change of life."

I have seen case after case, as have physicians all over the country, of women (a few men, as well) who, after dieting themselves into a critical state of protein-starvation, have turned to cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or sleeping pills to "ease" their tortured nerves.

Diet has a direct, and very important, influence on your nerves and your disposition. Elimination of an important high-protein food from your diet, for no reason other than that it has "too many calories," means depriving your body of several vitally necessary food elements. To illustrate: the high-protein and natural-£at foods such as butter, cheese, milk, meat, eggs and seed cereals are also rich sources of thiamin (vitamin B-i), known to nutritional science as the "nerve vitamin." The older you grow, the more thiamin your body needs. Anyone who has read my previous books knows that I refer constantly to thiamin as the "age-fighting vita­min," for that is exactly what thiamin does for your nerves and your heart—it helps combat a premature old age.

When the diet of any person past forty lacks generous amounts of thiamin, one of the first symptoms is likely to be certain unpleasant changes in disposition. Even the calmest, most amiable person, when seriously starved for thiamin, will become irritable, depressed, suspicious, quarrelsome, jealous and generally neurotic. Insomnia and extreme sensitivity to noise and trivial vexations will make life a round of petty hells for this thiamin-hungry person who has excluded from his or her diet—or else never has included—enough of the foods that contain this important B-vitamin.

It may surprise you to learn that a thiamin deficiency can aggravate overweight, since too little of this B-vitamin in the diet leads to a craving for sweets. What irony! The pudgy lady puts herself on a fad reducing diet that does not contain enough thiamin to keep her from craving all the more avidly the sweets she is trying to deny herself. And the more you crave these forbidden foods, the more irritable your jangled nerves will make you. Instead, why not consider a reducing diet that feeds you too well to permit a sweet craving to make life miserable for you? I've planned such a diet for you in Part II.

Controlled experiments, at such famous medical institu­tions as the Mayo Clinic and the Bellevue Hospital in New York, have proved that the distressing nervous and mental symptoms of irritability, depression, suspicion, quarrelsome­ness, abnormal jealousy, insomnia, undue sensitivity to noise and petty irritations and general neurosis (plus the unpleasant symptoms of extreme fatigue, headaches, vague pains and general weakness) are cleared up promptly when adequate amounts of thiamin are restored to the diet.

I have seen cases where jittery, nerve-jangled men and women of middle age have banished their aging nervous habits and unsocial dispositions almost overnight after their starved nerves began receiving the food elements needed to feed the nervous system.

One such case was that of a woman beautician whose fash­ionable salon in a large eastern city is frequented each year by hundreds of women in search of their youth. But the proprietress herself, despite the outward care lavished on her own face and body, was nerve-old at forty-seven. To achieve the svelte figure which she advocated to her clientele, she had existed for long periods at a stretch on practically nothing except orange juice, lettuce salads, black coffee and cigarettes.

When I first saw her, she was a creamed and dyed, yet haggard and tense, woman whose nervous habits told me that her nerves were starving. Moreover, her lack of poise and nerve control made her look a lot older than her forty-seven years.

It took a bit of persuading, since she was abnormally afraid of gaining weight, to "sell" her on the weight-control diet outlined in Part II. She almost demanded a guarantee that she would not begin to "bulge here and there" if she followed this more satisfying diet. But follow it she finally did, and in a matter of days almost, she began to lose those taut, irritable, fidgety mannerisms which had detracted noticeably from her natural charm. So successful was her trial of the high-protein reducing diet that I understand it has now become part of the beauty regimen she recommends for her own clientele.

And for her common sense, I award her an honorable mention that I most certainly must deny the Chicago physi­cian (a leading heart specialist by the way), who prescribed for an overweight lady of my acquaintance benzedrine tablets "to take away her desire for food.*' Luckily, the lady had the good sense to refuse the prescription of this extremely harm­ful, habit-forming drug. She had seen a horrible example of what benzedrine can do to the nervous system—a relative of hers was spending an indefinite term in a sanitarium, thanks to another doctor's prescription of benzedrine for "killing the appetite."

Weight control can be achieved without sacrificing nerve health.

My advice to you is this: If your nervous symptoms indicate the need of extra thiamin in your diet, by all means select a reliable thiamin concentrate, but under no circumstances neglect the foods rich in the B-vitamins. Your body is unable to store large amounts of thiamin, so ample quantities of this B-vitamin must be supplied in the everyday diet. Remember also that thiamin is easily destroyed by cooking, and is ex­tremely soluble in water. Foods containing thiamin should be cooked as little as possible, and at low heat, to preserve this nutrient so urgently needed by your nerves.

A well-planned diet recognizes that certain minerals are also needed to keep the nervous system in first-class working order. Calcium and magnesium are relaxers for your jangled nerves. The nerves use calcium to transport impulses; when this mineral is not adequately supplied, your nerves become tense and irritated. Nutritional science recognizes that a calcium deficiency is one of the major causes of nervousness in persons of all ages.

Magnesium, too, has a direct bearing on nerve control. The blood of persons known to be suffering from extreme irritability has been found extremely low in magnesium. This mineral has an important influence on nerve action, and the relaxation of muscle tissues. Nutritionists suspect that too little magnesium in the diet may be connected with irritable, irrational behavior, and even with some types of insanity. If you are existing on a diet composed mainly of starchy, devitalized foods, with little or no green vegetables and fresh fruits, the odds are about even that your body needs magnesium. And if insomnia is the bete noire of your life, you'll be interested to learn that magnesium—together with calcium and the lactic acid found in sour milk products —are sleep promoters.

Because nervousness and lack of self-confidence are out­standing symptoms of the anemia caused by too little iron in the body, this mineral is also an essential for good nerves and a poise that attracts.

Another factor in the health of your nervous system is vitamin D, perhaps mainly because the calcium in your body may be absorbed more readily when a sufficient amount of the "sunshine vitamin" is present. We also have learned that when vitamin A is scarce enough in the diet to cause eye disorders, an accompanying symptom is a nervousness and general fatigue that interferes with personal contentment and efficiency. This was demonstrated recently at a factory in Ohio where many of the workers complained of eyestrain, burning and itching eyelids, and a nervousness and fatigue which sleep did not alleviate. These workers were all found to be severely lacking in vitamin A, so the company furnished a vitamin-A concentrate to them daily. In a very short time, their vision was again normal, and all symptoms of nervous­ness and fatigue had disappeared.

You can scarcely hope to retain the relaxed mannerisms of youth if you allow yourself to become grouchy, uncoopera­tive, irritable, jittery, tense and quick to anger. These are unpleasant disposition traits that we've come to associate more or less with age—the crotchety old man in the play and the bad-tempered old lady in the novel are stereotyped characters taken from real life.

But if you visualize yourself as a cheerful person, even-tempered in times of stress and excitement, with steady, relaxed nerves that allow you to sleep well, and to meet each day's problems with poise and graciousness, then you must beware not to let your nerves grow old.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...