Page 5 Advertisements Column 4

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 February 1942, Page 5

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

IT MAY NOT BE INDIGESTION. DANGER OF OVER-EATING. (By the Health Department). Has it ever occurred to you that the touch of “tummy” ache you get after a good dinner may be something a good deal different from what you think it is? That it may be heart trouble, for instance? A dose of good old sodium bicarbonate usually does the trick, and makes life tolerable again. But frequently the rather indirect symptoms of fermentation and gaseous distention that come on after meals in persons past middle life should be viewed with suspicion, even if the sodium bicarbonate does do its job. It may be caused by a disturbance of the gastric juices, the liver, or the intestinal tract. This is something for the doctor, to determine when the early symptoms present themselves. With surprising frequency, however, this upset is merely the heart registering a reflex protest against an overloaded stomach, to which it must force a blood supply to carry on the process of digestion. Persons living in a country like New Zealand, where good food is plentiful, have a natural tendency to consume more than is really necessary, and overeating in its relation to heart diseases after middle life is quite as detrimental as infection, alcohol, overwork, mental fatigue. And we do overeat. Numerous are the victims of incipient coronary sclerosis (narrowing and hardening of the heart arteries) who have consumed pounds of sodium bicarbonate for indigestion when the treatment needed was a lightening of the load on an overworked heart. Most people panic at the mention of heart disease. They regard it almost as a sentence of death. Nothing is further from the truth. If people would realise how remarkably the heart can compensate for disturbance due to disease, how it can adapt itself, and how wonderfully it can work even if impaired, the bogey would be dispelled. Regular friendly discussions with the doctor will enable a person with a diseased heart to lead a full and useful life for years without drastic sacrifices or hardship, provided he follows the doctor’s orders.