Blood and iron health care

There is much talk these days about "iron-poor" blood. You will recall that it is hemoglobin-a combination of protein and iron-which carries oxygen. When the number of red cells in the blood is not adequate or the cells do not contain adequate amounts of hemoglobin, the body is not able to get its proper supply of oxygen. Without the oxygen, the muscles and other tissues are not able to burn all their supplies of fuel. The body is unable to get sufficient energy. The condition is called anemia. If anemia is the result of inadequate hemoglobin, the problem may be overcome by good diet-and may be avoided the same way. As noted previously, foods rich in iron include meats, particularly liver, heart, and kidneys; also leafy green vegetables; enriched bread and cereal; egg yolk; potatoes; oysters; dried fruits; peas; beans.

And since hemoglobin also contains protein, good-quality protein foods in the diet help. It should be emphasized, too, that there are other types of anemia and other possible causes. And if you feel unduly fatigued and suspect that you have anemia, don't guess that it may be for lack of enough iron or enough protein or anything else. Find out-let your physician test to determine-exactly what, if any, kind of anemia it is and what should be done about it. There are certain diseases that are great enemies of the heart and circulatory system. They include high blood pressure, hyperthyroidism, rheumatic f ever, hardening of the arteries, diabetes, nephritis, and syphilis.  

How to Guard your heart?

You can guard your heart, too, by avoiding obesity and, if now over- weight, by sensible reducing. If you are overweight, your heart has to work harder routinely, day in and day out, minute after minute. Take your heart seriously-but don't worry about it. If this sounds contradictory, it is really not. Fear can injure the heart; and too many people are more afraid ~f heart trouble than of anything else. Because of their fear and anxiety, they may actually be contributing to the development of heart trouble. Not worrying about your heart simply means this: Have your heart examined at regular intervals by your physician.

If he says your heart is sound, get your mind off it and on to other advice he may have for you on proper nutrition and exercise. We should like to emphasize very strongly here that only a physician can tell whether or not there is really anything wrong with the heart. Pounding of the heart (palpitation) can be alarming, but it is more likely to be caused by nervousness than by a serious organic condition. When your heart suddenly seems to "flop over" in your chest, you may be frightened, but needlessly, for the phenomenon often is due to nothing more than the fact that you have been smoking too many cigarettes or drinking too much coffee. Between medical checkups, you can help yourself and your physician keep your heart in good shape by avoidance of excessive smoking.

 If you must smoke (see the chapter on that subject), cut down as much as possible or, preferably, switch to a pipe or mild cigar. Good diet, with regular spacing of relatively small meals, helps the heart to work at its best, and, as noted in the chapter on nutrition, there is evidence that sound diet may well reduce the likelihood of clogging of the arteries feeding the heart. Good diet also can reduce the likelihood of arterial damage elsewhere in the body, helping to maintain the integrity of the whole circulatory system. Keep your work and social life under reasonable control so that you are not chronically fatigued. If you feel tense and "driven" in our competitive world, talk to your physician. He may have advice that will be helpful; he may suggest little patterns of physical activity to be used at particularly tense moments to reduce the tension; if necessary, he may prescribe medication that may help tide you over a tense period; he may, if advisable, have you talk with a psychotherapist. You may be able, by any or all of these measures, to reduce nervous tension to the point where you can avoid trouble with your heart in later life.

Heart and Blood circulatory system protective care

 PROTECTIVE CARE There is much you can do to guard the health of your heart and circulatory system. Contrary to what many people believe, the heart is a tough rather than delicate organ. Surgeons have successfully closed stab and other wounds of the heart; they have repaired the valves within the heart and corrected malformations. Protected by the tough ribs, the over- lying lungs, and its own surrounding membrane, the heart is rarely dam- aged by a blow. This fact should be reassuring to parents of football players, boxers, and other athletes. Guarding the health of the heart does not mean trying unduly to spare it.

Heart that a practice now accepted as a safeguard-a gradual return, after an actual heart attack, to active, even strenuous exercise-would, only a decade ago, have been considered medical malpractice if a doctor had prescribed it. Today, many cardiologists advise patients after heart attacks to get moving-to begin slowly, with extreme caution, gradually increasing their activity. With a gradual, well-tailored, well-supervised program, there is little or no danger of overstraining the heart. Many ex-heart cripples now are even playing strenuous games such as handball. It is now realized that such slow, gradual, progressive physical training can help the heart develop an increased network of blood-supplying vessels, sometimes a greater network than it may have had before the heart attack, and there is increasing evidence that such training may substantially reduce the risk of another attack. However, there are limits to the amount of strain that should be placed on a middle-aged, old, or damaged heart, particularly sudden strain. If you have been leading a sedentary existence, and now, wisely, you decide you need to increase your physical activity and overall physical fitness, you should by all means check with your physician first and, with his guidance, based on the health of your heart and whole circulatory system, map out a program which will lead gradually to your goal. 

Drug Addiction and Curative Measures

RELATIVELY FEW readers of this blogs will have had any personal experience with illicit drug use. Yet it has become important for every concerned person-in term of children and other contacts-to be informed about that problem and what can be done to prevent serious consequences. Until fairly recently, illicit drug use and addiction were largely confined in the United States to the Skid Rows-to the hopeless, helpless, and disadvantaged of society. 

But in recent years, the scene has shifted dramatically to better neighborhoods and schools, to the respected and well-educated who, in increasing numbers, especially the adolescents, have been "turning on."

College and university students have been tempted to try drugs since 1962 when a Harvard instructor and some graduate students enthused over the virtues of a then little-known drug, LSD. Soon LSD became an "in" drug. It has also become an illegal drug, and even aside from its illegality, after a first surge of use it has become much less popular as it has become clear that taking LSD is playing a chemical Russian roulette. But the use of other drugs-marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, opiates-is widespread. And the penalties may be multiple.

 There are the legal punishments which may ruin the life of an offender. There are the possible threats of impaired development and alienation from life and society. And there are the risks to physical health. What scientific information is there available about the various drugs, their effects, and their hazards? Recently, pediatricians, psychiatrists, and other physicians, and the National Institute of Mental Health and other government and private agencies have been working to bring together all known facts.  Lysergic acid diethylamide is a man-made chemical first synthesized in 1938 from ergot alkaloids. Often called "acid" by its users, it is a mind-altering drug, classed legally as a hallucinogen.

A single ounce of LSD is enough to make 300,000 of the usual doses, each amounting to a speck, usually taken in a sugar cube or on a cookie or cracker. LSD, in an average dose, has effects that last eight to ten hours- increase of pulse and heart rate, rise in blood pressure and temperature, dilation of the pupils of the eyes, flushing or paleness of the face, sweaty palms, chills, irregular breathing, nausea, and distortion of the physical senses. Actually, the first effects of the drug may be on the physical senses. There are visual phenomena: walls appear to move, colors become more brilliant, unusual patterns unfold, flat objects become three-dimensional. 

Smoking Causes - Cautions - problems

In the seventeenth century, there was even a book authored by a London physician on smoking, Panacea, or the Universal Medicine. The book dedicated a drop of tobacco juice in each ear to cure deafness, a leaf on the head to cure headache, a leaf on a tooth for toothache. And, in the form of ointments, powders, leaves or concoctions, tobacco was suggested as a cure for burns, wounds, cancers, sciatica, diseases of the liver, spleen and womb, worms, colic, warts, corns, and mad dog bites.

The smoking of tobacco in paper wrappers as small cigars or cigarettes began in Spain in the seventeenth century and gradually spread. But the really tremendous spurt in cigarette smoking came during World War 1 with free distribution of cigarettes to soldiers, followed not long after-ward by acceptance of cigarette smoking by women. Even a century ago, Dr.Oliver Wendell Holmes, author, poet, and distinguished physician and Harvard Medical School professor, was writing: "I think tobacco often does a great deal of harm to health.

 I myself gave it up many years ago. I think self-narcotization is a rather ignoble substitute for undisturbed self." Early in this century some reports began to appear in medical journals suggesting an apparent relationship between smoking and specific diseases. In 1927, Dr. F. E. Tylecote in England reported that in virtually every case of lung cancer he had seen or known about, the patient was a regular smoker. But striking evidence of the effects of smoking was yet to come.

THE MODERN INDICTMENT In 1938, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University published a study on smoking and length of life based on findings in 2,094 men who did not use tobacco, 2,814 moderate smokers, and 1,905 heavy smokers, Dr. Pearl concluded that smoking is unquestionably associated with a reduction in length of life. For example, between the years of 30 and 50, the chances of dying are 15 percent greater for a moderate and 98 percent greater for a heavy smoker than for a nonsmoker. 

By 1965, studies of mortality rates of smokers and nonsmokers had extensive enough for Dr. Luther Terry, then Surgeon General, to report that 240,000 men would die that year prematurely from diseases associated with cigarette smoking. About 138,000 of the premature deaths would be from diseases clearly associated with smoking, such as cancer of the lung, larynx, oral cavity, esophagus and bladder, as well as bronchitis, emphysema, and coronary heart disease. Another 102,000 deaths would result from diseases in which the relationship to cigarette smoking, while not so obvious, is nevertheless well indicated. These figures did not include women.