HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 13330, 17 December 1943, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

give your heart a chance (By the Department of Health). Deaths from heart disease are on the increase in New Zealand. There is a good reason for it —more people live longer, thanks to improved ways of living, and they simply die from the most natural cause—in other words, a worn-out heart. There’s no cause for grave concern in their case. Where the real cause for grave concern lies with those whose hearts break down too soon. The principal causes of heart deterioration, apart from old age, are well known and well understood. Here they are: Rheumatic fever, mild attacks of which in childhood may cause damage to the heart; infectious diseases, such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, tonsilitis, pneumonia, syphilis, chronic infections —teeth, tonsil, sinus troubles, which produce poison; overstrain, and, of course, overweight. Many popular notions about the heart are false. A diseased heart does not cause fainting. Pain is seldom present in the forms of heart-disease that affect young people. Palpitation—that is, feeling the hearting beat —is not likely to be serious. The sensation that the heart skips or stops is often imagination, is usually unimportant, or maybe trouble of some entirely different kind. Too many people imagine they have heart trouble, when their hearts are perfectly healthy. It’s a dangerous state of mind, and the only way to clear it up is to have a medical examination. An annual examination is probably of more value in detecting signs of heart disease than anything else because if there is a hint of trouble it can be corrected in time.