The Northwest Times

ITS YOUR HEALTH!
YOUR HEART

The heart is a precise and efficient machine, a built-in living pump rated at only 1/240th of a horsepower. Yet it pumps the body's 11 pints of blood throughout the circulatory system in half a minute. Over the course of one day, the heart beats 100,000 times and re-circulates ten tons of blood.

It is well to treat the delicate mechanism with respect, and learn the rules for keeping it healthy.

The man who may be a genius at locating trouble in mechanical tools, and a whiz at fixing them seldom knows the most marvelous one, the pump which beats inside his own body. It is worth understanding, and worth caring for because it can't be traded in when it begins to show wear and as in the case of other organs of the body trouble can develop in various parts of it.

The heart's function is not intricate. Its duty is to pump blood which has been aerated in the lungs out through the arteries and bring the blood back through the veins.

The three main causes of trouble in this circulatory system of heart and blood vessels are rheumatic heart, hardening of the arteries, and high blood pressure.

The fact that heart ailments are more common today than formerly is because medical science has advanced the typical life expectancy from less than 50 years to about 65 and much of the heart trouble shows up in the later years.

It is most common among three types of workers: executives, foremen and skilled workmen. This is because these three classes drive themselves with less respect for their hearts than men in other types of work. They often live high pressure lives and won't listen to a doctor even when warned.

It is a good sense to have a general physical checkup at least once a year which of course, includes a medical checkup on the circulatory system. It is much easier to correct a minor flaw than to attempt a major overhaul after the flaw has spread trouble over a wider area.