WHAT DOCTORS TELL US

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 16

WHAT DOCTORS TELL US

GRATUITOUS ADVICE AND BLOOD (From Oub Own Correspondent.) LONDON. August 17. Dr Leonard Williams, at the New Health Society’s Summer School* at Malvern:— . , " The fashionable disease of the moment is blood-pressure. Although it is called a disease, it is really a mechanical fact, because without bloodpressure wc Could have bo existence. The typical high blood-pressure person is the bald fat man of 50, who hug never fiad indigestion in his life, and who if you tell him he should not eat and drink so much will say that those damned doctors don’t know what they’re talking about. But one day he bends down to tie up his bootlace, and he has a stroke. There is nothing refined or nice about high blood-pressure, although it is so fashionable. It is due to gross overfeeding and under-exercise, and over-in-dulgence generally. •‘The opposite to that type of man is the tall, thin, cadaverous person with low blood-pressure, whose one desire _ is to lie down, and who hated doing_ anything which necessitates his being upright. He is really no more refined than the xa« man, because he has probably been eating and drinking things which poison him just as much as the fat man has. The pleasure we get when we see a thriller on the kinema or on the stage is really high blood-preseure. A loud, sudden noise sends up your blood-pressure, so that blood may be furnished to the extremities to enable the body to respond to the primitive instincts of fighter flight. That is why the French gesticulate when they are excited. The bloodpressure is raised. Extra blood is pumped to the extremities, but, instead of fighting or running away, the French gesticulate. On the other hand, the Scot merely says ‘Och aye,’ and goes and has a glass of whisky. The reason you get pleasure out of music is also because your blood-pressure is raised. “Stop smoking, and do not take cocktails. They are an invention of the devil. Do not eat refined sugar. The increase of cancer, especially of the internal digestive organs, has kept pace with the increase in the cheapness or refined sugar. Refined sugar is an article which is divorced from its context. If you eat sugar as it should be eaten, in fruit or in the cane, you eat it with other things which enable you to digest it. But if you eat it in the form of lollipops you may be laying up for yourself the risk of cancer." IMPORTANCE OF A SANE DIET. Dr Elizabeth Sloan Chesser, also at Malvern:— “ People in middle life allow themselves to get ugly, obese and lazy, whereas if the laws of health and hygiene were better understood and obeyed we should be in our prime at 60. What we ate, in a Sense, we become. Are not overfed, gluttonous old gentlemen irritable, rigid minded, intolerant of new ideas and customs? Food influences for good or ill every organ and tissue of the body, including brain and nerve tissue. The fact that the majority of people do not live the full interesting life that they might and are more or lees satisfied to be half men or half women is due largely to the food they ate. «As to the effect of food on the emotions, certain foods tend to promote j hate, lust, and jealousy, while others, like , music, sooth the savage breast. There ] is all the difference between excess of underdone beef steak and milk. The spotty, fractious child fed on excess of sugar, rice, tapioca, and rusks might be metamorphosed into an angel of sweetness and beauty by change of diet to vegetable soups, fish, chicken and roast apples." IDIOTIC CRAZE OF SLIMMING. Dr J. Neil Leitch, of the London School of Dietetics:— “ Id spite of accounts in the press about people dying because of slimming treatment, people still try to adopt this extreme. Fat is the buffer of the body, the tissue paper which keeps the folds in and the creases out, the cotton wool which protects the delicate points. Fat is a great insulator against cold. Fat stored in the body is food on which we live when our digestion cannot work, when our stomachs cannot tolerate food and when wc are racked with fever and pain. If , we are without these stores we stand »j

worse chance o{ recovery. Fat is a vicious circle, and those who are fat will get atill more fat. How then arc you to get thin? "You must become n cannibal. You must eat yourself. You must eat your own fat. Try a day, three days, 10 days, Or even more, on one to 20 oranges a day, and nothing else but water. The carbohydrates of the oranges will burn jmur body fat away. Take exercise; try skipping, Massage that fat away. Selfmassage either by band or rubber rollers is an excellent method to etart the fat moving away." TRIBUTE TO YOUNG MOTHERS. Dr Elizabeth Sloan Chesser:

■ “ Some of the young mothers in the twenties bring up their children a great deal better than the mothers of my generation did. I have a small grandchild of three, and he is brought up much better than his father was. He has such charming manners. He kisses me good-night when he goes to bed, and goes to sleep without a murmur, but his father used to scream the house down. "You can say what you like about the younger generation of mothers, but they certainly know how to bring up their children, and they take the trouble to learn all they can about the subject." NUDISM, Dr Leitch: “I doubt whether nudism is a suitable cult for our climate, but I cannot help admiring the pertinacity, the foolhardiness, or the bravery of the nudist, call it what you like. If we all wore less, clothes we should be better off. If we exercised in bathing slips in the open air it would be far better than exercising in ordinary clothes indoors." COD-WYER OIL FOR HEALING. According to the current issue of the Lancet, the application of cod-liver oil to surface wounds produces striking results. Two years ago at a surgical congress in Germany, Professor W. Lobr explained how he had been impressed with the effect of cod-liver oil given internally on the healing of wounds in children.

He began to apply the oil to open wounds, and finding that the oil would not “ stick " very satisfactorily, be devised a mixture of the right consistency which would penetrate down into the depths of a wound and yet not ooze away from the surface. t Under a layer of such a concoction Professor Lohr discovered that the growth of bacteria was minimised, and bacterial poisons rendered harmless. Actually a mass of infected material is quickly changed into a clean surface and the dead tissue is shed off. The reaction is a violent one, and as soon as it js safe to do so, the whole area is covered with a layer of oil and immobilised in a plaster bandage. It .is claimed that recent injuries such as occur in industry and burns of a moderate degree are particularly suitable for this treatment. Rapid healing without the necessity for subsequent skin grafting is the usual result, and the comment of the Lancet is that one doubts whether such success has attended any other method. The method is painless.