Here's good news for you people with high blood pressure.
Dr. Irvine H. Page, past president of the American Heart Association, said you don't have to give up smoking or drinking providing you smoke or drink in moderation. And the genial director of re-
I search for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation brought with him to New Orleans Wednesday other cheering news. He said two drugs, not yet on
; the commercial market, are proving highly successful in lowering blood pressure. They are called guanethidine and darentihen. They can be taken by mouth and they produce no bad side effects.
Dr. Page, who delivered the Urban Maes Research Foundation lecture Wednesday at the Louisiana State university medical school, said too much stress has been placed on overstres.
SUGGESTS PROOF He said he is opposed to abol-
jishing everything that's fun; that
! "unless there's a clear proof for withdrawing things, people enjoy,
| we shouldn't forever be going
I around making people feel guil-
fty.'V
| The Cleveland cardiologist said
I there's no proof that drinking in
'moderation causes high blood pressure; that there's no reason
I why a person • with high blood pressure shouldn't drink, providing he doesn't overdo it. And the same holds true for smoking, he
I added.
j "If a person can give up smoking without becoming jittery," said the physician, "Maybe it's
! just as well to give it up. However, if a person with high blood pressure smokes in moderation
and really enjoys it I don't think
it is necessary for him to stop smoking." J
Dr. Page said giving up cigarettes is beneficial in peripheral vascular disease, which should not be confused with high blood pressure and in cases of angina pec-toris "if the cigarettes bring on pain."
'NEVER DOES GOOD*
The cardiologist said it never does any good to tell people to cut things out.
"Volstead tried it with liquor and you know how far foe got,' added the visiting physician. "And now there's so much talk about the dangers of smoking the use o1 cigarettes goes up six per cent a year."
Dr. Page said the American businessman is under no greater stress than the businessman who built pyramids in ancient Egypt.
"Of course," he added, "over-stress is not a desirable thing but after all it is the only things which makes man different from monkeys. Man would not be worth a darn if he was tranquil all the time. If he was he would even quit reproducing and that woulc end everything.- Anyway childrer and Russia being what they are today there's bound to be stress.' ALL CLASSES SUFFER
The physician said that although there's a hereditary element in high blood pressure, there is no particular pattern for the disease —either psychological or physical. He said the laborer suffers from it as much as the business executive; that the Negro has high blood pressure as well as the white man.
Dr. Page said there's been a big advance in recognition of the fact that there are abnormalities in the blood vessels going to the kidneys which cause high blood pressure.
"These are demonstrated by means of injecting a dye into the aorta which is opaque to X-rays," the physician explained.
Dr. Page said many of abnormalities which cause high blood pressure can be corrected by vascular surgery; that the abnormal blood vessels are replaced with new blood vessels from an artery bank or with a clacron-knitted vessel; that after the operation the blood pressure comes down.
TRANSPLANT PROBLEM
"Some of this work has been done right here in New Orleans by Dr. Oscar Creech and Dr. Robert R. Burch," he explained. "Transplant a human heart? Well eventually this may be possible, though the crux of the problem is to overcome the rejection mechanism in the body, which disposes of foreign tissues when they are introduced."
Dr. Page said high blood pressure may be caused by kidney ailments such as Bright's disease, kidney infection or abnormalities of the renal vessels. He said it could be caused by tumor of the adrenal glands or overactivity of the adrenal or pituitary glands. CAUSES DISCUSSED
"An overactive nervous system could lead to high blood pressure," added the physician, "since such overactivity could bring on increased impulses in the blood vessels, which would cause them to contract, with a resulting rise in pressure. Or high blood pressure could be caused by abnormalities of the blood vessels, ranging all the way from hardening of the arteries to constriction in the blood vessels, preventing the flow of blood from the vessels."
Dr. Page was welcomed to the city by Dr. Homer Dupuy, president of the Louisiana Heart Association, and Dr. Floyd Skelton, director of the Ur-Maes Research Foundation and associate professor of pathology at the LSU medical school. PHOTO: -Photo by The Times-Picayune.
LOOKING OVER the program of the fourth annual Urban Maes Research Foundation Wednesday are (from left) Dr. Floyd Skeltoii, director of the Urban Maes Research Foundation; Dr. Irvine H. Page, past president of the American Heart Association, and Dr. Homer Dupuy, president of the Louisiana Heart Association.
