HEARTY THEORIES

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12484, 19 October 1938, Page 2

HEARTY THEORIES

“ATHLETE’S” DISEASE A BOGEY The modern approach to the study of the heart and its action in health and disease has led to the exploding of many fallacies. The work of the late Sir James Mackenzie, the development of the electro-cardiogram, and more recently the scope and accuracy Avith Avhich the X-rav screen can uoav present the living heart for inspection and measurement, have all combined to revolutionise various old and longestablished vieAvs about the significance of certain heart conditions, says the medical correspondent of the London ‘‘Daily Telegraph.” This has been emphasised in a brief but very illuminating paper, published in the ‘‘British Medical Journal” by two experienced cardiologists, Dr. J. W. Vinnell and Dr, W. A. R. Thomson. Thus the belief, so often still held, that shortness of breath in a middleaged or elderly stout man or woman is probably due to a “fatty heart” is probably quite erroneous. Indeed, the authors hold that the term “fatty heart” seldom represents any such fact, and would in any case be a condition scarcely possible to diagnose during life if it existed. Another still very commonly held belief is that a healthy heart can he injured by mere physical strain or muscular exertion.

The so-called “athlete’s heart” is, in fact, a bogey, and the authors fully support Lewis’s contention, the result of a very Avide experience, that “the burdens imposed by physiological acts upon the normal heart, however heavy these burdens may be, neA r er injure the heart and fibres, never produce injurious dilation, and never exhaust the heart’s reserve.”

Again, at one time, every so-called heart murmur was regarded as a serious portent, whereas it is now fully established that very many of these are of no significance at all, and indeed, at certain ages and in persons of certain types of physique, they may almost be regarded as normal.

Finally, in the great majority of cases, dizziness and faintness iare not indications of a “Aveak” or diseased heart. They are much more likely to be of psycho-neurotic origin. In other words, the heart is an extremely tough and resilient organ, exceedingly difficult to damage by any ordinary process of life, and Avith immense reserves and poAvers of compensation even Avhen it has been injured by disease.