Myths about Foot care - Early Problems

 EARLY PROBLEMS on Feet

About 99 percent of us are born with perfect feet and manage to quickly acquire trouble. One study carried out not long ago in seven cities found that 74 percent of children in elementary schools had foot problems; by high school, 88 percent.

There are several reasons for this. Throughout life the feet are subjected to the stress of standing on hard surfaces. Man doesn't do enough walking, which is good for the feet. Standing is an enemy of the feet in the sense that it involves 100 percent use of them; walking involves only 50 percent use since one foot rests while the other supports weight. 

And shoes-poorly fitted and often designed for the eyes rather than the feet -deserve a major share of the blame. Foot specialists who have examined many thousands of feet lament over what they call "man's insistence on forcing a square into a triangle." If you take off a shoe and look straight down at your foot, you will note that the sides make roughly parallel straight lines, and even the front can be described more or less as a straight line running from big to little toe. But look at your shoes and more than likely the toes are shaped like triangles.

Only when man started enclosing his feet in shoes did he have to start worrying about corns, calluses, hammer toes, bunions, and other foot ailments.

MYTHS 

We are surrounded by foot myths. They range from the notion that many foot troubles stem from wearing sneakers in childhood to wearing loafers, which are supposed to be bad because they let the feet spread. 

As one authority on the feet notes, undoubtedly the feet will grow somewhat larger and wider if not restricted by ill-shaped shoes, but this is healthy. The biggest misconceptions center on flat feet and fallen arches. Because the Army once rejected thousands of men with flat feet, the idea that there's something inevitably wrong with flat feet persists. 

 One of the nation's outstanding investigators of the foot, has reported that many people with arches "as flat as pancakes" never have experienced foot pain, while some of the most painful and obstinate cases involve feet with well-formed arches.

According to some authorities, only one out of 1,000 people with flat feet experiences pain because the feet are flat. The best practice for the flat-footed person-and anyone else with a painful foot problem for which there is no clear-cut, obvious cause-is to get advice and treatment from a physician or podiatrist rather than to keep buying arch supports. 

THE DECAY PROCESS-ADVANCES AGAINST GUM DISEASE

THE DECAY PROCESS 

Decay, essentially, is an acid-etching process. The acid is formed when bacteria, always present in the mouth, digest food particles left in the mouth. The acid attacks the enamel, the outer layer of the teeth which, even though it is the hardest substance in the body, will dissolve in acid. Decay is sneaky. Even a tiny hole, one you cannot see, through the enamel can be enough to allow acid to enter to start dissolving the dentin, the softer structure under the enamel. 

When the decay process finally reaches the pulp, the living part of the tooth containing nerves and blood vessels, you may feel pain, but not necessarily. A tooth may r. be almost completely rotted away and abscessed without causing pain. It would be bad enough if the effects of decay in a tooth were limited to the tooth, but a diseased tooth can allow bacteria to enter the blood- stream to be circulated to the rest of the body. Dr. J. C. Muhler, of Indiana University, one of the country's leading dental researchers, has written:

ADVANCES AGAINST GUM DISEASE 

Meanwhile, gum disease-technically known as periodontal disease-has come in for hard study. And not only have effective methods to help The Armed Forces always had been faced with a serious dental disease problem. Entering servicemen had an average of seven decaying teeth each, and developed more while on duty; service dentists couldn't begin to cope adequately. In 1961, the Army set up a small-scale experimental program. 

Servicemen had their teeth cleaned in the dental chair, but instead of finishing up with the usual abrasive polishing paste to make the teeth gleam, Army dentists used a paste with fluoride added.

Along with bright teeth, servicemen also got fluoride burnished into the enamel during the polishing. In the same sitting, a topical fluoride solution was dabbed on. 

They were then sent away to make regular daily use of a fluoridated toothpaste. . By 1963, Army dentists had expanded the program so it reached more than 300,000 men. It has been expanding since, and in the Navy and Air Force as well. Result: huge reductions in new cavity formation. A comparison study at the Navy's New London, Connecticut, base, for example, showed an 86 percent reduction in the decay rate among men on the program. 

After two years of experience with the program at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Admiral Kyes could report that "midshipmen now have a caries expectancy of one new cavity in ten years," versus the average rate of university students of the same age of two new cavities each year. 

Heart Problem heart foundation heart beat

 The atrium and ventricle on the right are separated from their counterparts on the left by a wall of muscle, called a septum. Into the right atrium comes "used" blood returning from coursing through the body, during which trip it has given up its oxygen to body cells in exchange for cell wastes. It now needs freshening and it flows from the atrium through a valve into the right ventricle. The valve, the tricuspid, is there to prevent blood from being pushed back into the atrium when the ventricle contracts. The contraction of the ventricle pushes the bluish "used" blood into the pulmonary artery toward the lungs. 

Thus the right side of the heart is a pump devoted to moving blood toward the lungs for oxygenation. When the blood, freshened in the lungs, returns through the pulmonary veins to the heart it enters the left atrium. From here it goes, through the mitral valve, to the left ventricle. And it is the contraction of the left ventricle that sends a surge of fresh blood into the aorta, the great artery which comes out of the heart and from which branches run to all parts of the body. Valves to prevent backward flow of blood are also located where the aorta and pulmonary artery emerge from the heart.

 THE HEARTBEAT 

The beat of the heart-on the average, 72 times a minute--starts in a knot of tissue called the sinoatrial node located in the atria. The node contains nerve cells and fibers and muscle cells and is called the heart's pacemaker because it gives rise to the impulse, or spark that starts a wave of contraction. The wave spreads over the muscle of the atria and, upon reaching another node near the junction of atria and ventricles, produces an impulse which leads to contraction of the ventricles. 

As already noted, the heart does not lie entirely on the left side, de- spite a popular notion to that effect. Rather it is near the midline with about one third of its bulk on the right and two thirds on the left. The flatter base of the heart faces backward, and the sharper apex faces out and downward. It is the apex that reaches to the left, and because it pulses with each beat; the heart appears to be centered at that spot rather than stretching toward it. 

Common Skin Problems- SKIN SPOTS AND FRECKLES - EXCESSIVE PERSPIRATION -

COMMON SKIN PROBLEMS

Skin variations among individuals-for example, in the amount of pigment, number of sweat and lubricating glands-can be considerable. Sometimes extremes of these give rise to problems.

SKIN SPOTS AND FRECKLES

 The less pigment the skin contains, the lighter the color. Those rare people who have virtually no pigment are called albinos. Much more common are less extreme cases of people with skins that tend to produce relatively little pigment; for them, sunburn must be guarded against. Many individuals have skins that freckle on exposure to the sun. If you happen to be a freckler who must spend considerable time in the sun, expose your skin as little as possible. A heavy suntan lotion or face powder will help. Some lotions contain perfume oil which may cause dark brown spots to develop, and so you may find it necessary to use a lotion without perfume. Avoid "freckle removers.

 Any preparation strong enough to be effective may produce inflammation unless used under medical supervision, the best thing to do for freckles are covering them with face powder, or, if necessary, with a preparation -Covermark. If the freckles are so disfiguring as to present a very real problem no other- wise solvable, it is best to ask your physician to refer you to a dermatologist or a skin clinic for a trial of more intensive treatment. What holds for freckles does, too, for "liver spots"-marks that may occur in dark-skinned people, and actually have nothing to do with the liver but are simply increases in pigmentation. White areas that appear on the skin are usually due to loss of pigment in specific areas (vitiligo). If the areas are conspicuous, the best thing to do about them is to cover them-and, certainly, to avoid tanning, which makes them more conspicuous.

EXCESSIVE PERSPIRATION

While this in some cases may be due to the menopause or to actual poor health-night sweats, for example, are characteristic of some diseases-excessive perspiration is not uncommon in people in excellent health. If you're in good health and perspire excessively, especially under the arms, you can probably control it with a commercial antiperspirant-deodorant preparation of your choice. A common ingredient in such preparations is aluminum chloride, which is usually perfectly safe, unless you happen to be allergic or sensitive to the chemical. It is always wise to test any preparation cautiously a few times, using very little, until you are certain it is all right for you. If it is not, if repeated applications produce irritation, stop using it. Deodorants, as already noted, mask odor but do not check perspiration. Antiperspirants, commonly combined with deodorants, tend to reduce the amount of perspiration. It does no harm to check perspiration in the armpits, hands or feet, since the rest of the skin is large enough to do the work of sweating. But never apply an antiperspirant preparation to the entire body.