A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson (readnow TXT) π
CHAPTER II
WHY WE HAVE A STOMACH
WHAT KEEPS US ALIVE
The Energy in Food and Fuel. The first question that arises in our mind on looking at an engine or machine of any sort is, What makes it go? If we can succeed in getting an answer to the question, What makes the human automobile go? we shall have the key to half its secrets at once. It is fuel, of course; but what kind of fuel? How does the body take it in, how does it burn it, and how does it use the energy or power stored up in it to run the body-engine?
Man is a bread-and-butter-motor. The fuel of the automobile is gasoline, and the fuel of the man-motor we call food. The two kinds of fuel do not taste or smell much alike; but they are alike in that they both have what we call energy, or power, stored up
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(1) A foot that has never worn a shoe (from a photograph); (2) A foot so cramped and bent as to prevent firmness of step and gait.
Our Shoes, an Important Factor in Health. Few more ingenious instruments of crippling and torture have ever been invented than fashionable tight shoes with high heels.
Kipling never said a shrewder or truer thing than when he made Mulvaney, the old Irish drill-sergeant, tell the new recruit, "Remimber, me son, a soljer on the marrch is no betther than his feet!" and this applies largely to the march of life as well.
Every shoe should be at least three-quarters of an inch longer, and from half to three-quarters of an inch wider, than the foot at rest, to allow proper expansion of these great "carriage-spring" arches. If children run free in the open air, either barefoot, or with light, loose, well-ventilated shoes, or sandals, they will have little trouble, not only with bunions, corns, "flat-foot," or lameness, but also with their backs, their gait, and their carriage. Easily half of our backaches, and inability to walk far or run fast in later life, to say nothing of over-fatness and dyspepsia, are caused by tight shoes.
SLEEP AND RESTWhy We Need Rest. A most important element in a life of healthful exercise, study, and play is rest. Even when we are hard at work, we need frequent breathing spells and changes of occupation and amusement to keep one part of our muscles, or our brains, from poisoning itself. But after a time, in even the strongest and toughest of us, there comes a period when no change of occupation, no mere sitting still, will rest us; we begin to feel drowsy and want to go to sleep. This means partly that the fatigue poisons, in spite of fresh air and change, have piled up faster than we can burn them, so that we need sleep to restore the body.
All day long we are making more carbon dioxid than the oxygen we breathe in can take care of; while we sleep, the situation is reversedβthe oxygen is gaining on the carbon dioxid. This is why the air in our bedrooms ought to be kept especially pure and fresh.
But the need goes deeper than this: sleeping and waking are simply parts of the great rhythm in which all life beatsβa period of work followed by a period of rest. Continuous, never-ceasing activity for any living thing quickly means death. While externally the body appears to be at rest, the processes of growth and upbuilding probably go on more rapidly when we are asleep than when we are awake. The benefits of exercise are made permanent and built into the body during the sleep that follows it. The more rapidly young animals are growing, the more hours out of the twenty-four they spend in sleep. When you sleep, you are not stopping all the useful activities of your body and mind, you are simply giving some of the most useful and most important of them a chance to work. The only likeness between sleep and death is that in both the body is quiet and the eyes are closed. Really we are never more alive and growing than when asleep.
It is of the utmost importance that young children especially have all the sleep they need, and that is precisely all that they can be induced to take. The best rule for you, then, to follow, is to go to bed when you feel sleepy, and to get up when you wake rested. Every child under twelve should have at least ten hours of sleep, and every grown person eight, or better still, nine hours. Time spent in sound, refreshing sleep, is time well spent. If you cannot sleep well, it is a signal that something is wrong with your health, or your habitsβa danger signal of great importance, which should be attended to at once. The best and only safe sleep-producer is exercise in the open air.
DISORDERS OF MUSCLES AND BONESThe Muscles and Bones Have Few Diseases. Considering how complex it is, and the never-ceasing strain upon it, this moving apparatus of ours, the nerve-bone-muscle-machine, is surprisingly free from disease. The muscles, though they form nearly half our bulk, have scarcely a single disease peculiar to them, or chiefly beginning in them, unless fatigue and its consequences might be so regarded. They may become weakened and wasted by either lack or excess of exercise, by under-feeding, or by loss of sleep; but most of their disturbances are due to poisons which have got into the blood pumped through them, or to paralysis or other injuries to the nerves that supply them.
The muscles of an arm, for instance, which has been lashed to a splint, or shut tightly in a cast for a long time, waste away and shrink until the arm becomes, as we say, "just skin and bone"; and the same thing will happen if the nerve supplying a muscle, or a limb, is cut or paralyzed.
An aluminum splint holds the parts of the bone together.
The bones have more diseases than the muscles, but really comparatively few, considering their great number and size, and the constant strain to which they are subjected in supporting the body, and driving it forward and doing its work under the handling and leverage of the muscles. Most of their diseases are, like those of the muscles, the after-effects of general diseases, particularly the infections and fevers, which begin elsewhere in the body; and the best treatment of such bone diseases is the cure and removal of the disease that caused them.
Repair of Broken Bones. If bones are broken by a fall, or blow, they display a remarkable power of repair. The "skin" covering them (periosteum) pours out a quantity of living lime-cement, or animal-mortar, around the two broken ends, which solders them together, much as a plumber will make a joint between the ends of two pipes. This repair substance is called callus. The most remarkable thing about the process is that, when it has held the two broken ends together long enough for them to "knit" firmlyβthat is, to connect their blood vessels and marrow cavities properlyβthis handful of lime-cement, which has piled up around the break, gradually melts away and disappears; so that, if the ends of the bone have been brought accurately together, you can hardly tell where the break was, except by a slight ridge or thickening.
TROUBLES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
The Nervous System is not easily Damaged. The nervous system is subject to a good many more diseases than are either the muscles or the bones; but, considering how complex it is, it is not nearly so easily damaged or thrown out of balance as we usually imagine, and has astonishing powers of repair. Instead of being one of the first parts of the body to be attacked by a disease, such as an infection or a fever, it is one of the very last to feel the effects of disease, except in the sense that it often gives early that invaluable danger signal, pain.
Headache. Next after fatigue the most valuable danger signal given us by our nerves is that commonest of all pains, headache. Indeed, it is not too much to say that headache is the most useful pain in the world. It has little to do with the condition of the brain, but occurs in the head chiefly because the nerves of the head and face are the most sensitive of all those in the body, and the first ones, therefore, to "cry out" when hurt.
Headache has been described as the cry of a poisoned or starved or over-worked nerve, and is simply nature's signal that something is going wrong. Toxins, or poisons, formed anywhere in the body, from any cause, get into the blood, are carried to the sensitive nerves of the head and face, and irritate them so that they ache. It is foolish to try to do anything to the head itself for the relief of headache, although cold cloths, or a hot-water bottle, may be soothing in mild cases. The thing to do is to clear the poison out of the blood, and the only way is to find what has caused it.
Nearly all the things that cause headache do so by poisoning the blood. A very common cause of headache, for instance, is getting over-tired, especially if at the same time you do not get enough sleep; and, as you already know, tiredness, or fatigue, is a form of self-poisoning. Another very common cause of headache is bad airβsitting or sleeping in hot, stuffy rooms with the windows shut tight. If you do this, not only are you not getting oxygen enough into your blood to burn up the waste poisons that your own cells are making all the time, but also you are breathing in the waste poisons from other people's lungs, and the germs that are always in bad air.
Another very common cause of headache is eye-strain. Whenever you find that, when you try to read, the letters begin to dance before your eyes, and your head soon begins to ache, it is a sign that you need to have your eyes examined and perhaps a pair of glasses fitted to enable you to see properly.
Constipation and disturbances of digestion also very often cause headache by poisoning the blood; and, as you know, the first sign of a bad cold, or the beginning of a fever, or other illness, will often be a bad headache.
In short, a headache always means that something is going wrong; and the thing to do is to set to work at once to see if you can find out what has caused it, and then to remove the cause. If you cannot find out the cause, then go to a doctor and ask him to tell you what it is, and what to do to get rid of it.
Above all things, don't swallow a dose of some kind of headache medicine, and go on with your work, or your bad habits of eating, or using your eyes; because, even though it may relieve the pain, it doesn't do anything whatever to remove the cause and leaves you just as badly off as you were before you took it. Besides, most of these headache medicines, which for a time will relieve the pain of a headache, are narcotics, or pain-deadeners; and in more than very moderate doses they are poisons, and often dangerous ones. Those in commonest use, known as the "coal tar" remedies, because the chemists make them out of coal tar,[27] are likely to have a weakening effect upon the heart; and, while not very dangerous in small doses, they are very bad
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