What High Blood Pressure Means The news that Mr. Bonar Law's retirement is the result of high blood pressure has created a good deal of curiosity regarding this condition, writes a physician i in the "Mail."
It has been aptly said that for all practical purposes of life a man is only as old as his arteries: and it is quite true that the majority of men meet Nature's warning checkmate and often their coup grace through the portal of the circulatory system.
In order to understand what high blood pressure means it is necessary to bear in mind that the blood is contained in a practically closed system of elastic tubes—under pressure.
Each beat of the heart sends a wave of increased pressure along! the blood-vessels which can be easily felt in every superficial artery, and is known as the pulse.
The necessity for perfectly elastic arteries is an obvious sine qua non, to maintain the flow and to receive the shock of increased pressure at; every beat.
Etasriciry or Yours.
The pressure im the blood stream is maintained by the narrowing of the here as the main vessels split up into finer branches. as well as by a certain state of contraction or tone in the smaller arteries, which obt"ins under healthy and normal As long as tha elastic wall of the arteries—the vital rubber, as it has. been called—remains healthy all is well. Tt must be said, however, that individuals differ greatly in this respect, and in some human} machines bid rubber is used for the tubing. Lame men, indeed, fail; at 40 through no fault of their own—an unfortunate heredity being the causal factor.
Increasing blood pressure is almost the common fate of every man with advancing years, and associat ed with if is a weakening of the elastic wall of the blood-vessel The blood, moreover, attains w ith age an increased adhesiveness to! the vessel wall, slackening its flow and banking up the increased pressure.
Worry, the* stress and strain of life, over-eating and drinking, poisons, too, both chemical and morbid, and the wear and tear from over-work all tend to bring about this condition of high blood pressure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.