TALKS ON HEALTH

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 27 June 1940, Page 2

TALKS ON HEALTH

BY A FAMILY DOCTOR

'an overtired heart

Some of you people do not respect 1 your hearts as you ought. Faintness is { the result of fatigue of the heart as well J rs of the muscles of the legs and arms. ‘ When you have done a hard day’s * shopping, and faint when you get home, 1 it is your poor old heart that finds ( itself too weary to pump the blood up into the brain; and as the t ain cannot work unless it has a plentiful supply 1 of good fresh blood, it fails to do its duty, and loss of consciousness follows. 1 Perhaps you forget that your heart is really a muscle like the biceps. It 1 works all day and all night, and even < attends to business on Bank Holidays : and Sundays. It beats long before you - are born, and goes on beating for a ' short time after you are dead. It never 1 strikes for higher pay; it only demands : care and good food. COUNTING THE BEATS ! Men who train for rowing or boxing 1 train their biceps and calf-muscles, but * neglect their hearts, and fall out before j the race is finished because the heart 1 has not been trained to stand the strain. - Try the experiment of counting your { pulse for one minute whil you are ’ lying down; then sit up and count 1 again. You will find that the heart £ is beating faster. Then stand up, and 1 again you will find an increase in number of beats; and if, finally, you run upstairs and count, you will find the number of beats in a minute raised j by twenty-five per cent. Every exer- 1 tion you undertake throws more work 1 on the heart. If you try the experiment j of walking round the garden briskly, J you will, as I have just described, i notice a faster action of the heart when i you count the beats with the watch in j your hand; but try going the same J journey round the garden carrying * a heavy bag, and the rate of beating ; will be much higher than it was when 1 you walked without the bag. j < GIVE IT A CHANCE U If instead of a heavy bag you were £ to put on flesh to the tune of a couple « of stone, your heart would be the first i organ in the body to feel the difference. 1 Hence when you put on fat you give < your heart more work in two ways; i you make it work harder because of j 1 the heavier weight, and also you must. ' remember that when you put on fat some of it is deposited on the heart j itself, and that, if in large amount, will 1 impede the heart’s action. In every | heart in a butcher’s shop you will see 1 some fat, and it does no harm so long . as it is not in excess. The moral of all j this is that you must not allow your ■ weight to increase to such enormous . proportions as one sees occasionally in ' elderly men and women. It is disrespectful to your heart. And secondly, ; when you begin to feel a little faint, it j is the voice of your heart asking for a little rest, and you must sit down or lie J down to give it a chance. Cigarettes act as a heart-poison, especially the j very cheap kinds. You must not smoke cigarettes until you are twenty-one, and \ then you must exercise your own dis- ; cretion. THE BLOOD AND THE LIFE i I suppose most of you know by this : time that every organ in the body is connected with every other organ. The blood flows all round the body at a very rapid rate of circulation. We j are not conscious of the circulation of ; the blood, but, nevertheless, a large | amount of the life-giving fluid is passing through every region of the body ; all day and all night as long as we I live. A drop of blood that is in the ' liver now will be in the brain two ; seconds later, and in the sole of the I foot ten seconds after that. It is for

this reason that the heart may be poisoned by a diphtheritic affection of the throat; that the brain may be made delirious by an abscess in the sole of the foot. You believe this when you are reminded of it, but you do not always appreciate the fact as you should. You imagine that each part of the body is, isolated, and you are apt to be impatient with your doctor, who examines a part of the body distant from the site of the trouble about which you are complaining. You complain of a headache, and the doctor says he wants to examine your kidneys; you complain of dizziness in the eyes, and he wants to look at your ears; you have a swollen knee, and he asks to see your teeth. GERMS IN THE BLOOD | I just want you to keep in mind what I have just written. The blood that courses through every part of that joint has travelled all through the body. At what part of its journey did it pick up the germs that were deposited in the joint? You must not be cross with| your doctor because he wants to exam- j ine you thoroughly. And don’t go ; home to your wife and grumble because you have a swollen ankle and the doctor said you were to have your teeth attended to. I can assure you that it is a well-recognised principle that one part of the body can infect another. A joint may be made rheumatic because the germs which attacked it were carried from an ulcerated intestine, from a chronic ulcer, from a septic tooth-socket, or any other un- j healthy spot. A BILIOUS ATTACK I recommend the starvation treat- j ment for a bilious attack. The liver, the intestines, the stomach, and the whole digestive apparatus are out of gear solely from overwork. Too much food breaks the heart of the most willing liver and stomach. Anything I in reason they can manage. Enough is as good as a feast. Badly cooked food throws a needless strain on the stomach; it has to work ten timfes j as hard to digest tough food. Even if 1 the food is well cooked it must be well j chewed, or else the juices of the stom- ! ach cannot act on it. No wonder there

was a rebellion on the part of the stomach; too much food, badly cooked and not masticated. But still, the damage is done, and we must do our best to i*ectify it. Give the wretched insides a complete rest. Turn them out to grass, so to speak, and let them roll in i the meadows instead of doing hard : work. j THE STARVATION TREATMENT J Mother puzzles her dear head what to give dad when he has a bilious attack, but the solution of the difficulty is easy. Give no food at all. It is helpful and comforting to give hot water to drink; it washes out the insides and clears the breath. A mouthwash of very weak potassium permanganate, faintly pink in colour, is useful. It is a common mistake to use this substance in a strong solution; a tiny pinch of solid to a tumber full of water is the proportion. No fear of death from starvation need be feared. A man can live several days without food. It is no good saying, “Shall I give him a large bowl of broth, or shall I administer a plate of arrowroot to sooth his poor stomach?” For twenty-four hours give nothing; a large bowl of nothing at all will soothe tha inflamed insides best. Natural appetite will re- , turn in due course.