Overeating : Part 2

Maintaining Health
by R. L. Alsaker

(Page 5 of 33)

Vigorous adults are often the victims of pneumonia, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. Overeating is chiefly to blame, not the bacteria which are given as the principal cause.

Rheumatism, kidney disease and diseases that manifest in hardening of the various tissues, all being forms of degeneration, are quite common. Again, the principal cause is overeating.

There are a great number of people who live many years without any special disease, but who are always on the brink of being ill. They are full-blooded and too corpulent. Although they are often considered successful, they are never fully efficient either physically or mentally. They do not know what good health is, but they are so accustomed to their state of toleration that they consider themselves healthy. They are rather proud of their stoutness and their friends mistake their precarious condition for health. These people often die suddenly, and friends and acquaintances are very much surprised. No healthy man dies suddenly and unexpectedly except by accident.

Instead of growing old gracefully, in possession of our senses and faculties, we die prematurely or go into physical and mental decay. Bleary eyes, pettiness, childishness and lost mental faculties are no part of nature's plan for advanced years. Those manifestations result from man's improvement on nature!

From birth to death we are victims of this terrible ogre of overeating. It deprives us of friends and relatives. It takes away our strength and health. It makes us mentally inefficient and cowardly. At last it deprives us of life when our work is not half done and our days should not be half run.

How is it possible, you may ask, that this is true? Of course, overeating is not the only cause, but it is the overwhelming one. It is the basic cause. Aided by other bad habits it conquers us. We are what we are because of our parentage, plus what we eat, drink, breathe and think, and the eating largely influences the other factors of life.

Cholera infantum causes the death of many babies. It never occurs in babies who are fed moderately on natural, clean food, not to exceed three or four times a day. The child is cross. The mother thinks that it is cross because it is hungry and accordingly feeds. The real cause of the irritability is the overfeeding that has already taken place. The baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains in the alimentary tract where it acts as a direct local irritant to the intestines. When these are irritated, the blood-vessels begin to pour out their serum to soothe the bowels and the result is diarrhea. The sick child is fed often. Digestive power is practically absent. The additional food given ferments and more serum has to be thrown out to protect the intestinal walls. Soon there is a well established case of cholera infantum.

If only enough food had been given to satisfy bodily requirements, none of the milk would have spoiled in the alimentary tract. If all feeding had been stopped as soon as the child became irritable and pinched looking about the mouth and nose, and all the water desired had been given and the child kept warm, there would have been no serious disease. In these cases, the less food given the quicker the recoveries and the fewer the fatalities.

Another common disease of childhood is adenoids. To talk of these maladies as diseases is rather misleading, for they are merely symptoms of perverted nutrition, but we are compelled to make the best of our medical language.

Adenoids are due to indigestion. The indigestion is due to overeating. This is how it comes about: A child eats more than can be digested, generally bolting the food, which is often of a mushy character. The excessive amount of food can not be digested, and as the intestines and the stomach are moist and have a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, fermentation soon takes place. Some of the results of fermentation in the alimentary tract are acids, gases and bacterial poisons. These deleterious substances are absorbed into the blood stream and go to all parts of the body, acting as irritants. We do not know why they cause adenoids in one child and catarrh in another. It is easy enough to say that children are predisposed that way, which is no information at all. It seems that all of us have some weak point, and here disease has a tendency to localize. What part the sympathetic nervous system plays, we do not know. Glandular tissue is rather unstable and therefore it becomes diseased easily and adenoids are therefore quite frequent.

A coated tongue, or an irritated tongue, both due to indigestion, is a concomitant of adenoids. Such diseases do not merely happen. There are good reasons for their appearance. They are not reflections on the child, but they are on the parents who should have the right knowledge and should take time and pains enough to educate and train the child into health.

Tuberculosis is one of the results of ruined nutrition. First there is overeating. This causes indigestion. The irritating products of food fermenting in the alimentary tract are taken up by the blood. The blood goes to the lungs where it irritates the delicate mucous membrane. In self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result of disease, not the cause.

Tubercular subjects never have healthy digestive organs. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are persuaded to eat many times more food than they can digest, and thus they have no opportunity to recover, for the overfeeding ruins the digestive and assimilative powers beyond recuperative ability. A large per cent. of the human race perish miserably from this disease, which results principally from the ingestion of too much food. The liberal use of such devitalized foods as sterilized milk, refined sugar and finely bolted wheat flour is doubtless a great factor in so reducing bodily resistance that the system falls an easy prey to disease. Too little breathing and poor, devitalized air are also important factors.