TALKS ON HEALTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 16 (Supplement)

TALKS ON HEALTH

BY A FAMILY DOCTOR.

BED AS A TONIC You are feeling wearied out, and want a tonic? Well, try going to bed two hours earlier than is your usual habit for a fortnight. The extra rest, even if you do not actually sleep, is beneficial. It relaxes your nerves and your whole body to lie quiet on your back, and it aids digestion to rest quietly after a meal, and so you get all the goodness out of the food you have swallowed. If you did manage to sleep the extra time it -will do you a lot of , good. Sleep is the panacea for all evils. I ought to add that sleep shduld be natural; the sleep, or rather stupor, produced by powerful drugs is not nearly so beneficial, and such a sleep may be followed by a headache on waking. Also many of the drugs used for sleeping draughts are Harmful in other ways; some weaken the nerves in the end. others arc dangerous to the heart or upset the digestion. I am always very careful about ordering sleeping draughts. It is a real calamity when a patient, especially if she happens to be a highly strung woman, is trained to depend on drugs for sleep —her last state is worse than the first. A doctor knows when to order a soothing draught, and he exercises due discretion but the indiscriminate use of mixtures and tabloids to induce sleep cannot be too strongly condemned. Sleeping Draughts If you cannot sleep an attempt should be made to discover the cause by experimenting. Perhaps you eat too much late at night, or, on the other hand, you may have your last meal too early, so that you go to bed hungry or wake up at oin the morning feeling hungry. Some people find that a satisfactory sleeping draught is to be found in a few biscuits, eaten slowly, when sleep deserts the pillow. I have known cases where the stuffy air has awakened the sleeper early in the morning; the air is used over and over again and the stufliiness makes the lungs cry out for fresh air; in some houses there is so much anxiety to keep the air out that even the chimneys are blocked up. Sleep with the window open. It is easy to say li Don’t worry”; it is not so easy to carry out the injunction. But still some effort should be made to keep worries outside the bedroom door;, you can either welcome and brood over your troubles, or you ran make a resolute effort to throw them off. If the sleeplessness cannot be overcome, it is a good plan to try a change of air. If you lead an indoor life, a sharp walk for an hour or two may act as a sleeping draught. 1 have often found that reading a suitable book brings sleep to wakeful eyes. I say (i suitable,” because many books are the reverse of soothing. I don’t want you to read the blood and thunder style of hook. Hair and the Health The condition of the hair is dependent on the condition of the general health. In many cases the principal object of the physician is to improve the patient’s health in the confident anticipation that the condition of the hair will also improve. Take as an instance a grave illness such s typhoid fever. The whole system is profoundly depressed; nothing is working right; appetite, digestive apparatus, heart, and lungs are all temporarily out of order. And what happens to the poor old hair of the head? It falls out in handfuls. Then as the patient gets better a fresh crop of new, strong hair appears until, the health completely restored, the hair is luxuriant as before. Treatment Good and Bad The application of lotions and ointments is not by any means always necessary. An anaemic girl should treat her hair only through her general system. Of course, the hair must always be well brushed and washed at certain intervals, but it must not be forgotten that there are two ways of treating the hair—one by direct attention to the scalp, and the other through the medium of the blood that nourishes

the roots. Do not be impatient; even if the treatment is highly successful, it will take some weeks before the good effect is fully shown. A hair once grown i$ unalterable; the blood does not run up the hair as the sap runs up a tree. You must wait for the old hair to fall off and the new' hair to take its place. The Inevitable Singeing the hair is useless; the treatment of hair is the treatment of the scalp; to burn a bit of hair three or four inches away from the scalp cannot possibly do any good. There comes a time when you must accept the inevitable; when once the root from which the hair grows is dead, no power on earth will resuscitate the defunct hair. You cannot grow a hyacinth unless there is a bulb to grow it from. Baldness, especially when it runs in the family, may occur very early in life, and it is often very difficult to overcome. Do not be deluded into thinking that a bald scalp can be covered with a luxuriant growth of hair. One of the commonest causes of falling of the hair is scurf. The best treatment is to wash the scalp with a solution of soft soap in rectified spirit. Once or twice a week is often enough.