The Care of The Heart-Pump And Its Pipe-Lines

A Handbook of Health
by Woods Hutchinson

(Page 13 of 30)

The Effect of Work upon the Heart. Whatever else in this body of ours may be able to take a rest at times, the heart never can. When it stops, we stop! Naturally, with such a constant strain upon it, we should expect it to have a tendency to give way, or break down, at certain points. The real wonder is that it breaks down so seldom. It has great powers of endurance and a wonderful trick of patching up break-downs and adjusting itself to strains.

Every kind of work, of course, done in the body throws more work upon the heart. When we run, or saw wood, our muscles contract, and need more food-fuel to burn, and pour more waste-stuff into the blood to be thrown off through the lungs; so the heart has to beat harder and faster to supply these calls. When our stomach digests food, it needs a larger supply of blood in its walls, and the heart has to pump harder to deliver this. Even when we think hard or worry over something, our brain cells need more blood, and the ever-willing heart again pumps it up to them. This is the chief reason why we cannot do more than one of these things at a time to advantage. If we try to think hard, run foot races, and digest our dinner all at one and the same time, neither head, stomach, nor muscles can get the proper amount of blood that it requires; we cannot do any one of the three properly, and are likely to develop a headache, or an attack of indigestion, or a "stitch in the side," and sometimes all three. So the circulation has a great deal to do with the intelligent planning and arranging of our work, our meals, and our play. If we are going to increase our endurance, we must increase the power of our heart and blood vessels, as well as that of our muscles. The real thing to be trained in the gymnasium and on the athletic field is the heart rather than the muscles.

Fortunately, however, the heart is itself a muscle, alive and growing, and with the same power of increasing in strength and size that any other muscle has. So that up to a proper limit, all these things which throw strain upon the heart in moderate degree, such as running, working, and thinking, are not only not harmful, but beneficial to it, increasing both its strength and its size. The heart, for instance, of a thoroughbred race-horse is nearly twice the size, in proportion to his body weight, of the heart of a dray-horse or cart-horse; and a deer has more than twice as large a heart as a sheep of the same weight.

The important thing to bear in mind in both work and play, in athletic training, and in life, is that this work must be kept easily within the powers of the heart and of the other muscles, and must be increased gradually, and never allowed to go beyond a certain point, or it becomes injurious, instead of beneficial; hurtful, instead of helpful. Over-work in the shop or factory, overtraining in the gymnasium or on the athletic field, both fall first and heaviest upon the heart.

Importance of Food, Air, and Exercise. At the same time, the system must be kept well supplied through the stomach with the raw material both for doing this work and for building up this new muscle. When anyone, in training for an event, gets "stale," or overtrained, and loses his appetite and his sleep, he had better stop at once, for that is a sign that he is using more energy than his food is able to give him through his stomach; and the stomach has consequently "gone on a strike."

How to Avoid Heart Overstrain and Heart Disease. The way, then, to avoid overstrain and diseases of the heart and blood vessels is: -

First, to take plenty of exercise, but to keep that exercise within reasonable limits, which, in childhood, ought to be determined by a school physician, and in workshops and factories by a state factory physician.

Second, to take that exercise chiefly in the open air, and as much of it as possible in the form of play, so that you can stop whenever you begin to feel tired or your heart throbs too hard - in other words, whenever nature warns you that you are approaching the danger line.

Third, to keep yourself well supplied with plenty of nutritious, wholesome, digestible food, so as to give yourself, not merely power to do the work, but something besides to grow on.

Fourth, to avoid poisonous and hurtful things like the toxins of infectious diseases; and alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics, which have a harmful effect upon the muscles, valves, or nerves of your heart, or the walls of your blood vessels.

Fortunately, the heart is so wonderfully tough and elastic, and can repair itself so rapidly, that it usually takes at least two, and sometimes three, causes acting together, to produce serious disease or damage. For instance, while muscular overwork and overstrain alone may cause serious and even permanent damage to the heart, they most frequently do so in those who are underfed, or badly housed, or recovering from the attack of some infectious disease. While the poisons of rheumatism and alcohol will alone cause serious damage to the valves of the heart and walls of the blood vessels, yet they again are much more liable to do so in those who are overworked, or underfed, or overcrowded.

The Disease of the Stiffening of the Arteries. The points at which our pipe-line system is most likely to give way are the valves of the heart, and, more likely still, the muscles of the heart wall and of the walls of the blood vessels. These little muscles are slowly, but steadily, changing all through life, becoming stiffer and less elastic, less alive, in fact, until finally, in old age, they become stiff and rigid, turning into leathery, fibrous tissue, and may even become so soaked with lime salts as to become brittle, so that they may burst under some sudden strain. When this occurs in one of the arteries of the brain, it causes an attack of apoplexy, or a "stroke of paralysis." Overstrain, or toxins in the blood, may bring about this stiffening of the arteries too soon, and then, we say that the person is "old before his time." A man is literally "as old as his arteries."

Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1911, By Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression

About the Author

Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) was an American physician, born at Selby, Yorkshire, England. He graduated from Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1880 and received his medical degree from the University of Michigan four years later. He worked as a professor of anatomy at the State University of Iowa and then became a professor of comparative pathology at the University of Buffalo.