HEAT AND HEALTH.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1400, 6 September 1923, Page 7

HEAT AND HEALTH.

IN THE DOG DAYS. The law of averages holds good with weather as with everything else in life, and our plan must be to get the best possible out of tihe warm weather —when it comes. There are people who are never better than when the thermometer is 80 degrees or 90 degrees in the shade; others who feel collapsed and depressed when they meet a wave of real summer face to face. It is a matter of temperament, perhaps, as people so often say; more likely it is physiological Do you perspire easily? Then heat will suit you well enough whatever you may think, because that means that your skin knows how to regulate your temperature.

You generate heat with exercise and with food, and you are made hotter or colder by the temperature of the atmosphere as well. Up and up would go your temperature if nature did not know her business. Fortunately each one of use is provided with a wonderful heat-regulating mechanism. Your temperature is safe enough, and unless in disease maintains a beautiful mean, because you have a heat “ centre ” in your brain and a skin supplied with sweat glands. So perspire, and perspire to your heart’s content. The Yulg'arity of It is of secondary importance if you want to consider your health. There are people—they are usually deficient in thyroid gland—whose skin is always dry and who are therefore very uncomfortable and unhappy in hot weather. Light baths help the skin - o act, as do hot water baths and sun baths. Drink plenty of water also so as to induce the skin to take its share of excretion. We must do all we can to bring about healthy perspi.viation. If you feel collapsed in hot weather. secondly, regulate your clothing. Too heavy and too many clothes prevents the skin glands from acting well. After all, clothes are worn more to conform to the modesty complex of civilisation t)han from any necessity of health and comfort—in hot weather at least. Conform to the demands of civilisation, of course, but reduce the number and simplify the mode of your clothes as much as possible. The House in Hot Weather.

Further, if you want to be healthy anrl happy when the summer is actually here, try to keep your house cool and shaded and quiet. That calls for intelligence. Opening wide the window's will make the house hotter and hotter if you do it at the wrong time of day. In the early morning and in the evening open windows are desirable, but when the sun is hot in the middle of the day close your windows and draw' down your blinds. So you keep out the hot air and the sun blaze, and your rooms will be cooler and more comfortable all day and all nigiht in consequence. Mind and Heat. Lastly, keep cool in your mind. Poise, self-control, equable temper are all to the good when the barometer is high and when the rest of the world is irritable with the heat. People lose their tempers more readily and more frequently in summer than in winter. They quarrel and argue and get unhappy about things that mattei not half so mu Oh as keeping control over oneself and one’s psychical temperature. “Keep cool,” says the small boy to the antagonist he has been able to rouse to a display of irritation. Let us apply the advice to ourselves. Keep cool mentally and physically in hot weather if you wish to be happy. Never get angry, because the uprush of that sort of feeling hurts us far more than it can hurt the person we are incensed with. And life is so difficult that it is futile somehow to expect much from people whose difficulties w r e can never really gauge.