HEART PAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 December 1938, Page 8

HEART PAIN

THE DANGER SIGNALS. The heart is the most important of all bodily organs, and is rightly so regarded by the popular mind: so that it is natural, when an individual feels pain on the left side of his chest, that his thought should fly to his heart, and dwell there. And once a man’s ideas are fixed on heart disease their dislodgment is very difficult. There are many causes, remote from heart disease, of pain .in the left side of the chest, but on the other hand true heart disease does give pain in that region. It is important to distinguish' the pain of real heart disease from pain of other origin. The simplest way to do this is to understand the reasons and manifestations of true heart pain. Clear vision of what is real is a good equipment for detecting the unreal. All tissues of the body have blood for their food. If their blood supply is good, then, being well fed, they work well and without complaint. So it is with the heart. Blood is supplied to the wall of the heart by the coronary arteries, and while these arteries are efficient the heart is well nourished with blood. As a man grows older his arteries become narrower and less elastic. So as a man comes to middle age and goes beyond it the heart wall often becomes partly starved of blood. Now the more work an organ does the more food it requires; and the more exertion a man performs the more work his heart has to do. If often happens that a partly-starved heart can do a certain amount of work, but if called up to do more makes protest. And that protest is made manifest by pain. It follows then that true heart pain will occur during or immediately following exertion; and that a given amount of exertion will invariably cause pain. A man, who on walking up a hill feels pain that is due to heart disease, will feel that pain each time he walks up a hill. Also, the smaller the effort that causes the pain the graver is the disease. The man who feels pain when he walks one hundred; yards slowly is more seriously ill than the man who requires a brisk walk up hill to induce an attack; and the man who suffers attacks of pain when resting is obviously the most stricken of all. Heart pain is known as Angina Pectori.';, and this name gives a good indication of where pain is felt. For Angina Pectoris means “pain of the breast”; and the middle of the breastbone and the area of the chest to the left of it are the sites of pain in heart disease. Pains are often felt on the inner side of the left arm and the left of the neck and sometimes in the left ear and left lower jaw. But the situation of the pain is not so important in the diagnosis of Angina Pectoris, as the fact that it is caused by exertion. To sum up. Angina Pectoris is a state of the middle-aged or elderly, and consists of pain occurring during or afterexertion, and felt in the middle of the breastbone or to Ihc left of it. And people who have pain in the chest that does not fit these three conditions need have little concern about the health of their hearts.