HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 August 1941, Page 2

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

TREATMENT OF COMMON

COMPLAINTS.

GOITRE.

(Prepared and issued by the Health

Department)

One of these days someone is going to find out just what causes goitre. In the meantime, humanity ■ in general, and Now Zealanders in particular. will have to go on following some very simple rules of diet if they want to escape it. Even if doctors are at a loss to say what is responsible-for this dwfiguring affliction, they do know

it is bound up with an iodine in-'•’’ffi-';ennv hi the thvroid gland—that is, the gland that enlarges as a goitre. L n nk of iodine encourages its development. They can’t say any more than that. But they prescribe approved amounts of iodine which will help to check that development. By the constant use of iodised salt, for both 'able and cooking use, prepared under the Health Department’s regulations, the disease can be effectively controlled. lodised salt has from three-quar-j tens to one-and-a-half parts of potassium iodine to every 20,000 parts of salt. It is not very much, but it is [ enough, and actually it is twelve times as strong as the original admixture of potassium iodide. And it is a tasteless and inexpensive way of taking an extremely beneficial tonic. Goitre is an unpleasant disease. If it is not taken in hand it may cause all sorts of functional disorders, and, in severe cases, inward goitre may be fatal. In the advanced stage, the visible goitre is unsightly. New Zealanders are particularly prone to it. Research in this country has led to a fairly general conclusion that, in districts where the iodine content of the soils is high, the incidence of goitre is low, and vice versa: but a puzzling feature is that this is not strictly true of all districts. However, medical science is still trying to find out whether the causative agent is a microbe or some other factor. It deeply suspects that this factor has something to do with infection, unhealthy, living conditions, or polluted drinking water, but, so far, the right answer still remains elusive.]