Untitled

Dunstan Times, Issue 3147, 11 December 1922, Page 2

NATURAL MEANS OF RELIEVING BLOOD PRESSURE. When all is going well with üb, the blood, which carries all the material** used in the growth, repair and work or the body from the digestive organs to all the working cells, presses ou the walls of the blood vessels with a force which gives us no sensations either pleasant or painful. In other words, blood pressure is then normal and! does not affect- us subjectively any more than a healthy heart or liver does. But, unhappily, there are times when all' ’s not well'with) the blood pressure. It may be too high or too low, and then we are sick or ailing. Disordered! blood’ pressure, is a source of discomfort and 1 sometimes of danger to invalids, and a very worrying matter to physicians. There is, therefore, rejoicing in the medical profession on aiTOimt exporiincxitts published by Orr and limes in the April number of the British Journal of Experimental Pathology. These workers found that they could lower blood pressure bv tbe^situple expedient of giving their subjects large quantities of water. They worked on normal persons, on patients with a too high blood pressure but with kidneys in good order, and on patients with a high blood pressure and badly diseased kidneys. In all of these a * largo intake of fluid’ lowered blood pressure, though in subjects with damaged kidnevs the pressure rose at first ami then fell. This meant that the kidneys were unable to pass out water fast enough to prevent an initial rise, caused by the- increased volume of •blood, but that as soon as a good deal of water had 1 been got rid of the pressure fell for the same reasons that it did in the other cases. These arc definite results, and there is hope that they may furnish a means for relieving the discomforts and damaging effects of high blood ptossnte Their explanation is, so far. not final. Wo do not know certainly the first cause of high blood pressure. At e knov, that the very small arteries are narrowed when the pressure is; above normal. and we think that the narrowing is caused by some substance or substances made by things going wrong in the body’s protein factory. Wc are familiar with a number of drugs and chemical compounds. which, il taken into the body, cause the minute arteries to contract, and so raise Mood pressure. And we also know substances of the opposite nature which will cause the arterioles to dilate and the blood pressure to fall. These two classes of substances are called, respectively, pressor and depressor substances. A high Mood pressure is generally regarded as caused by the presence of pressor substances in the Mood. There is reason to think that these pressor substances are made by some perversion in the behavior of proteins In the body—when the proteins taken in through our food and the proteins of our bodies arc not broken down and built up by the steps they ought to pass through. The pressor substances are probably parts of protein molecules which should not collect in the Mood at all. because either the molecule should not split in a way to produce these parts —the pressors —or if these are made they should be used immediately in rebuilding other protein molecules, or they should be-combined to form sum harmless substances. This failure of protein breaking down and building up to go on in the right way may occur at one or several points, but if it occurs anywhere pressor substances may be absorbed into the blood and cause tbo small arteries to constrict before tbo pressors can be got rid of. If prossoi* substances are being made all the time there will' be a constant high blood pressure. Orr and limes suppose that three factors may have combined to produce the fall of blood pressure that followed copiousl water drinking. First, there was a Hushing out of pressor substances, and a lessening of their action took

place because 1 of their dilution in the blood 1 .• Second, a speeding up of a> too sluggish protein transformation was Caused by increase of water in the tisHues —chemical! changes are hastened by tlie presence of water and a more normal transformation began, a transfonntaioh winch did not include the making of pressor substances. Hurd, dilution of the contents of the large intestine lessened the activity of bacteria, which ordinarily split up undigested protein there, producing, among the clearage products, pressore which are readily absorbed into the blood from the intestinal contents. The tentative explanation which must at present be given to these results does not lessen their practical importance, or diminish the force of the moral to he drawn from them—a moral which points once again to the imperative need of water for the work going on in the animal body—a need especially urgent for all whose over-abundant diet contains a superfluity of meats' and other foods rich in proteins.