What Causes Heart Palpitations?
There is no man-made pump that compares in efficiency with the human heart. It is able to run a hundred years and more without the loss of even a few minutes for repairs. Even this efficient machine needs care, for the causes operating to induce heart trouble are many. Probably among the first is rheumatic fever, found often among young people. This is very likely to leave the heart damaged, although the patient may seem completely recovered and may even indulge in quite heavy ath- letics for some years.
What Causes Heart Palpitations?
But trouble develops in the thirties, as a rule, and in the fifties or earlier the person with this sort of heart may break down. Then there is the rapid pace of present-day life, to which some ascribe much of the increase in the death rate from heart disease of recent years. Hearts are as good today as those of yesterday, except for the changed conditions under which they are forced to labor.
Years of constant tension may lead to high blood pressure, materially increasing the burden on the heart. In time, permanent damage is done which, if nothing more, considerably restricts the physical activities of the possessor. Certain methods of exercise use up the reserves of the heart with undue rapidity. One of the most serious is the common custom, indulged in by many men who spend most of their time at desks, of trying to get a month’s exercise, very strenuously, in a single day.
Especially dangerous for such a man on a climbing trip to go into competition with guides and others who are physically active much of the time. His pride insists that he keep up with them and he does-but often at the cost of a serious heart strain. Youth withstands much more of this sort of strain than do middle and late life, as the elastic limit of the circulatory system is much higher in youth.
The same sort of strain takes place in comparatively young men who, splendidly trained athletes at college, have then let all training go. In the course of ten years or so they acquire a fine income, a family and probably thirty or forty pounds of surplus weight. They decide that something must be done. If exercise is taken in moderation and gradually increased as the body becomes accustomed to it, the results will usually be excellent. Often, however, the same vigor is used right at the start that was the habit of college days, and trouble is almost certain.
What Causes Heart Palpitations?
In order to remain at the greatest efficiency, the heart, like all other muscles, should be used not only reasonably, but regularly. Otherwise, the reserve built up in active days is gradually lost, and the heart gets “soft,” unable to withstand sudden or pro- longed strains.
If, however, the individual takes a fair amount of exercise daily he is always in training and the heart will withstand astonishing loads, even in late life. It is the man playing often for short periods throughout his career who can play tennis in the late sixties, apparently without harm.
There is no set time that a man becomes old, but long observation has set fifty as the age to start slowing down in every way, particularly in strenuous physical exertions. A man may boast that he is as good as he was at twenty-five, but he is not, no matter how much he may feel like it. The greatest protection against heart attack, suggests a famous heart specialist, is the “achievement of equanimity.”
“Some men can achieve this intellectually,” he comments. They ask themselves, ‘What kind of philosophy do I intend to live by?’ And they find one which nurtures life instead of destroying it. Others achieve equanimity emotionally, through a belief in beauty, in ideals, in unselfishness. They let the annoyances of life pass on one side and out the other.”
This does not mean that you should deliberately repress your emotions, however. When you get angry-and all of us do, at times-most doctors believe there is greater danger in holding your anger back than in expressing it. One specialist comments, “That’s why we need to let off steam in our daily lives. Easy re- lease of angry feelings not only lessens the danger of continuing inner pressure but makes violent outbursts less necessary.”
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