Overeating : Part 3

Maintaining Health
by R. L. Alsaker

(Page 6 of 33)

There are many causes of rheumatism, but overeating is the chief and it is very doubtful if a case of rheumatism can develop without this main cause. Exposure is often given as the cause, but a healthy man with a clean body does not become rheumatic.

Rheumatism is due to internal filth. A filthy alimentary tract makes filthy blood. Some say that the poison in rheumatism is uric acid, and perhaps it is, but there are no uric acid deposits in the body of a prudent eater. The elimination in this disease is imperfect. The skin, the kidneys, the bowels and the lungs do not throw out the debris as they should. Perhaps only one or two of these organs are acting inadequately. The debris is stored up in the system.

Why do the organs of elimination fail to act? Because so much work is thrust upon them that they grow weary and worn; also, a part of the material furnished them is the product of decay in the alimentary tract, and they can not thrive on poor material. Too much food is eaten. An excess of nutritive material, poorly digested, is absorbed. And so we come back to the principal cause, overeating.

When the eliminative organs fail to perform their function, the waste is deposited in those parts of the body which are weakened. The irritation from these foreign substances causes inflammation and the result is pain. The extent to which this depositing of material will go is well illustrated in some cases of multiple articular rheumatism, or arthritis deformans, where the deposits are so great that many of the joints become fixed (anchylosed).

We could review all the diseases, and nearly every time we would come back to disturbed nutrition as the principal factor, and this is true of not only physical ills, but the mental ones as well.

Various foods do not combine well, still if they are eaten in moderation they do but little harm. If we overeat, the evil results are bound to manifest, no matter how good the food, though it sometimes takes years before they are perceptible. The effects are cumulative. Each day there is a little fermentation with absorption of the poisonous products. Each day the body degenerates a little. The time always comes when the body can continue its work no longer, and then the individual must choose between reform on one hand and suffering or death on the other.

It is very difficult to convince people that they eat too much. Indeed, the average person is a small eater, in his own estimation. We have been educated into consuming such vast quantities of food that we hardly know what moderation is. In the past, physiologists and observers have watched the amount of food that people could coax down and this they have called the normal amount of food. This is far from the truth. The average American eats at least two times as much as he can digest, assimilate and use to advantage. Many eat three and four times too much. However, nature is very tolerant for a while. Most of us start out with a fair amount of resistance and are thus enabled to live to the age of forty or fifty in spite of abuses. If we could only dispense with our excesses, we could double or treble our life span, live better, get more enjoyment out of life and give the world more and better work than we can under present conditions.

There is much talk of food shortage. The amount of food consumed and wasted annually in the United States is enough to feed 200,000,000 people. Even with our present knowledge we can easily produce twice as much per acre as we are averaging, and we are tilling only about one-fourth of the land that could be made productive. If we use our brains there is little danger of starving. What is needed now is not more food, but intelligent distribution and consumption of what we produce.

We hear of cases of undernourishment. This doubtless occurs at times in the congested parts of great centers of populations. But there are not so many cases suffering from want of the proper quantity of food as from want of quality of food. Bread of finely bolted white flour is starvation food, no matter how great the quantity, unless other food rich in organic salts is also eaten.

The overeating habit is so common and comes on so insidiously that the sufferers do not realize that they are eating to excess. The resultant discomforts are blamed on other things. Babies are fed every two hours or oftener. They should be fed but three or at most four times a day, and never at night. When able to eat solid foods they get three meals a day and generally two or more lunches. Some children seem to be lunching at all times. They have fruit or bread and butter with jelly or jam in the hand almost all the time. They are encouraged to eat much and often to produce growth and strength. This kind of feeding often does produce large children, heavy in weight, but they are not healthy. Sad to relate, the excess causes disease and death.