HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22201, 19 February 1942, Page 2

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

THE PENALTY OF GROWING OLD (Prepared and Issued by the Health Department). Rheumatism is one of the penalties we have to pay for growing old. We know what it is, but we don’t know why it should be. In other words, we don’t know any specific cause for it. The reputed cause has been influenced by dominant trends of medicine, and an almost bewildering variety of responsible factors have been advanced, tested and discarded. Not one, by itself, has proved a definite single cause of chronic arthritis (joint rheumatism). Arthritis starts as an inflammation of the lining membranes of the joints, and in time may lead to an affected cartilage, or wasting of bones, or, eventually, stiff joints through the fibrous or bony union of the diseased end. Only a complete individual overhaul will reveal any possible cause, whether septic infective or dietary. In all cases let your doctor be your sole guide. Out of a mass of evidence on the dietary side, one bright fact emerges. That is the recognition of the importance of vitamins in a well-balanced diet in maintaining bodily resistance to rheumatic disease. Thus a diet of raw vegetables and fruit, nuts, crushed oats, milk, cream and salad oil, with the addition of certain cooked foods, such as one egg, two ounces each of meat, bacon, bread, and one ounce each of butter and cheese—all with no salt —has been found beneficial for short periods in the treatment of arthritis This type of diet will help particularly those cases where the pain is due to muscle and tissue stiffness and ’aches associated with joint trouble. These foods, it may be added, arc rich in vitamins B and C. Application of heat soothes pain, and the biological active ultra violet rays are beneficial. Gold therapy has been used with some success in rheumatoid arthritis. In a recent experiment at Home the disease was rendered inactive in 50 per cent, of gold-treated cases as compared with 5 per cent, in control group not so treated.