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Show Health and Beauty By . . ' DR. SOPHIA BRUNSON BLOOD PRESSURE sure, because it stimulates the heart and contracts the blood vessels ves-sels of the skin. Thus the heart must work against greater resistance. resist-ance. Electric light baths and other physio-therapy treatments help to regulate blood pressure. Not very much is known at the present, about the causes of high or low blood pressure. The writer has found that high blood pressure discovered in a patient, strikes terror to his heart, even though he has not the slightest idea even of the mechanics of blood pressure. The explanation is simple. "The circulating machinery of the body bo-dy is comprised of "a pump the heart; the reservoirs the arterial system, which is a high pressure reservoir; and the venous system a low pressure reservoir. These two reservoirs are connected by small tubes the arteriols and the capillaries. The pressure in the arterial reservoir is due to the fact that the heart is able to pump blood into the reservoir more rapidly than it escapes through the small openings open-ings which connect the arterial with the venous reservoirs. The size of the outlet openings is controlled con-trolled by nerve centers, acting upon the muscular walls of the small arteries, where they are made to dilate or contract, as the needs of the body may require. When the small arteries and capillaries contract, the blood es- : capes less rapidly, and the pressure pres-sure rises as long as the heart has energy enough to enable it to respond to the demand made upon up-on it. The limit of pressure rise is reached, only when the pressure is such as to rorce out through the smaller openings the amount of blood needed, to supply each one of the great organs, or series of organs or-gans in the body. General blood pressure may be increased for the purpose of meeting the needs of a single organ, as in cases of brain anemia due to compression by a clot, or any other mechanical cause. High blood pressure usually exists also in chronic interstitial nephritis (kidney disease)' as a compensation for the crippled condition con-dition of the kidneys, as well as in generall arterio-sclerosis, (hardening (hard-ening of the arteries). The chief factors concerned in blood pressure pres-sure in health are the heart energy ener-gy by which blood is forced into the arterial system, the tone of the .blood vessels, the amount of blood, the elasticity of the arterial walls and of the tissues, the vis- cosity (thickness) of the blood. Drugs alone are not reliable agents for regulating blood pressure. pres-sure. Sweating is effective in lowering low-ering blood pressure, because it reduces the volume of the circulating circu-lating blood. Sweating causes a large amount of blood to be withdrawn with-drawn from the general circulation into the skin. At the same time, the total volume of blood is lessened, lessen-ed, because water is poured out through the sweat glands. For this reason, sweating is a valuable remedy in high blood pressure. Sweating relieves the body also of a certain amount of poisons, that would otherwise have to be carried out through the kidneys. Thus the wear and tear on the organs of elimination is lessened. The warm bath lowers blood pressure pres-sure because it dilates the surface blood vessels and reduces the viscosity vis-cosity of the blood. This lessens the amount of effort required by the heart to pump the blood through the arterial system in the venous. The cold bath raises blood pres- |