HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 March 1943, Page 6

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

—— A GARDENING TIP. GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES. (By the Health Department.) As a source of pleasure and profit, kitchen-garden cultivation is hard to beat, but it can be a bit of a trial if you don’t know too much about it. Enthusiastic wartime amateurs have been known to become mildly mournful about those little aches and pains that develop after a spell in the garden, but, if gardening is tackled in the proper way, there should not be any cause for complaint on that score. In the first place, the implements you use must suit you in weight, size and balance. Backache, giddiness and headache are caused by bad stance, awkward handling of tools, and the use of unsuitable tools, and by bending too much from an upright position. ' Expert gardeners do all they can in a kneeling position. This way there is less strain on the back, far less liability to headache, and in most cases no giddiness, because the kneeling position involves little rigidity. Rigidity raises the blood pressure, and this causes headaches and giddiness. In those whose blood pressure, is high, especially if their arteries are old or degenerated, this extra pressure can be dangerous. The remedy is to get down, on your knees to it whenever you can. It is just as well to use a mat for the knees, though to get the knees wet is not as dangerous as people might suppose. But a mat is more comfortable, and a protection against injury from thorns, old nails, pieces of broken glass or stones.