KEEP YOUR HEART FIT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18075, 13 January 1921, Page 6

KEEP YOUR HEART FIT

(By Dr. Robertson Wallace.) | As your heart is the dynamo that , keeps the whole machinery of your life running smoothly, a little atten- | tion to it will repay you a thousand I fold. It will save you from developI ing any of those forms of heart dis|ea.se which cchne within the category j of preventable ailments. The majority of people start life ■with perfectly sound hearts, Nature i always giving each of us a brand new I set of sound organs wherewith to | start on life’s pilgrimage. Yet in J course of years many of these highly I efficient hearts become unfit for their i work of carrying on the circulation, [ the result being premature breakdown and, perhaps, life long invalidism. Why do hearts fail in one way or another, some quite early in life,"and some later? No heart is inefficient except for some very good and sufficient reason. The prime cause of heart disease beginning in childhood is rheumatism in the form of rheumatic fever or acute rheumatism affecting the joints, which causes inflammation of the valves of tfye heart. When doctors learn how to prevent rheumatic fever a great deal of human misery! due to valvular disease of the heart will be abolished. DON’T REST WEAK HEARTS. The causes of heart trouble which are well within the individual’s own immediate control are on the one hand underwork, and on the other overwork. The former is the cause of that “weak heart’’ from which so many of the well-to-do, the idle and the lazy suffer. This kind of heart may easily drift into the “dilated heart,’’ an aggravated form with more unpleasant symptoms. “Weak hearts” only get weaker if they are given the long rest they so often get. What they require is graduated exercise intelligently carried out. Exercise is the one thing needful to prevent a “weak heart.” You know you are developing this kind of heart when you can’t make a short flight of stairs, without panting heavily or' gasping for breath. You must go into training at once.

Overwork errs in the other direction. It puts a severe strain on, and often damages structurally the valves of the heart. It tends to destroy the elastic tissue in the walls of the blood vessels, and raises the blood pressure to danger point. It is the cause of what is often called “athlete’s heart,” and is obviously preventable. Heavy muscular labour is also a cause of this form of heart ailment.

In quite another category is heart inefficiency due to the controlling nerve mechanism going wrong from such easily preventable causes as the excessive use of tobacco (smokers’ heart) or alcohol, a life of excitement or of mental strain. These nerve disorders may lead to structural damage. “A word to the wise is enough.”