Under this heading our contributor, Dr Valentine Knaggs, deals briefly month by month, and according as space permits, with questions of general interest to health seekers and others.
In all Queries relating to health difficulties it is essential that full details of the correspondent's customary diet should be clearly given.
Correspondents are earnestly requested to write on one side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. When an answer is required by post a stamped addressed envelope must be enclosed.—[Eds.]
EXCESSIVE PERSPIRATION.
Miss R.E.N. writes.—I am troubled with excessive perspiration. I neither eat meat nor drink tea. I have a cold sponge bath down to my waist every morning, and I change all my clothes when I go to bed. My diet is, roughly, as follows:
Breakfast.—Oatmeal porridge with toast or bread and jam or golden syrup. Hot water.
Lunch.—Peas, beans or lentils, eggs, cheese. Vegetables: potatoes and onions, or carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips. Puddings, fruit or milk wholemeal bread, not much sugar except for sweetening fruits, etc.
Tea meal.—Wholemeal bread and butter, nuts, jam, cake, pastry; hot water.
At bedtime.—Hot water or coffee.
If our correspondent wishes to remedy this excessive perspiration she must get a hot towel-bath daily (all over),[14] wearing porous linen-mesh underclothing next the skin. She should also discontinue the soft sugary and starchy foods, and not mix fruit with other foods (it is best taken by itself, say, for breakfast). She needs more of the cooling salad vegetables. The following diet would be a great improvement:—
On rising.—Half-pint of hot boiled water, sipped slowly.
Breakfast.—Wholemeal bread or biscuits and butter (all made without salt), with salad or grated raw roots. Stop porridge, jam and golden syrup. Avoid drinking at meals.
Lunch.—Two eggs, or 2 oz. of curd cheese. Two vegetables cooked in casserole without salt; wholemeal bread or biscuits and butter; a few figs, prunes, dried bananas, or raisins, washed but not cooked. Avoid milk puddings or stewed fruits as too fermentative and heating.
Supper meal.—1 to 2 oz. flaked nuts, some crisp “P.R.” or “Ixion” biscuits with nut butter. Some fresh salad or grated roots. Stop jam, cake and pastry.
At bedtime.—Half-pint of hot boiled water, or clear vegetable soup, sipped slowly.
DIET FOR ULCERATED THROAT.
Mrs L.B. writes.—Do you think it would be wise for a person suffering from ulcers in the throat and on other mucous membranes to adopt a diet devoid of meat, yeast and salt?
It would certainly be wise to discard meat and salt in a case of this kind, but yeast is sometimes useful taken as “unflavoured Marmite.” The chief cause of ulcers is the abuse of the soft cereal and sugary foods. In a case of this sort I should advise a diet consisting exclusively of well-dextrinised cereals—e.g. Granose, Melarvi, etc.—with plenty of grated raw roots and finely chopped salads and tomatoes. This can be combined with curd cheese, raw or lightly cooked eggs, flaked nuts or Brusson Jeune bread as the proteid part of the diet.
FARMING AND SCIATICA.
Mrs A.C.B. writes.—For two months my husband, who leads an active open-air life, has had severe pain all down the back of his left leg. It is like neuralgia, and comes on worse when sitting. He has been a farmer all his life, but is anything but strong and constantly taking cold. Are these pains likely to be due to wrong food?
This pain is evidence of sciatica. Chills alone will not produce sciatica, which has its real cause in the system being choked up with acids and toxins of various kinds. In such a case as this, warm water enemas should be taken freely to clear the colon well; sugar, milk and all starchy mushy foods should be strictly avoided; vegetables should be taken either as baked roots or as fresh salads; eggs and cheese should be substituted for meat; and plenty of fresh butter should be taken. Boiled water, between meals, will be good, but nothing should be given to drink with food. Salt, pickles, and greasy or highly flavoured foods should be avoided.
TEMPORARY “BRIGHT'S DISEASE” AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT.
Miss E. would like to know what kind of diet is suitable for one who has been suffering from Bright's Disease following a serious illness. Why should meat have any bad effect upon the kidneys? She does not take it, although her medical man advises the use of it at once.
It is not an uncommon thing for people who have suffered from an acute septic fever to find albumen temporarily present in the urine. This is due to the irritant action of the toxins and other poisons (which the fever is the means of ejecting) upon the structure of the kidneys. The kidneys are filters and they remove the bulk of the soluble waste of the body.
The practitioner frequently finds albumenuria in cases of scarlet fever, typhoid fever, diphtheria, etc., and the object of his treatment is to prevent this condition of kidney irritation from becoming an established disease (Bright's disease).
Flesh foods, and especially meat extracts and meat soups, are the worst possible wherewith to feed these fever cases, because they throw so much extra work upon the kidneys. Meat is composed mainly of proteids. It also contains the urinary wastes and the toxins (due to fear) which were in the animal's body and on the way to elimination when it was killed.
This sufferer should take one meal per day consisting of fresh fruit only; the rest of the diet should consist of salad vegetables and finely grated raw roots, home-made curd cheese, dextrinised cereals (such as Melarvi biscuits, Shredded Wheat, “P.R.” crackers, Granose biscuits, Grape-Nuts, twice-baked standard bread, etc.) and fresh or nut butter.
PHOSPHORUS AND THE NERVES.
W.H.H. writes:—I should be very grateful if Dr Knaggs could help me with any information or hints regarding phosphaturia. I suffer much from this troublesome complaint.
We have to remember that the nervous system is two-fold. The one, or conscious portion, consists of the brain and spinal cord, from which all the nerves or branches travel to all parts of the body and give us dominion over them. The other, or subconscious, called the sympathetic nervous system, lies on either side of the front of the spine as two long chains with centres, or ganglia, at intervals. This second system is not within our control and has to do with the regulation of our vegetative functions, including the bulk of the digestive process.
All nerves, whether they come from the brain or from the sympathetic system, ranging to their smallest terminals, are built alike of cells, and these cells secrete a complex fatty substance, called lecithin, whose dominant element is phosphorus. This phosphorus has to be supplied to the body with food, and as food, and it cannot be properly utilised or assimilated by the body or used by the nerves to build up their lecithin unless it is eaten in the form of organic compounds.
The tissues of the body are continually dying, as a result of work done, and are continually being replaced by fresh young tissues as needed. It is the function of the nerves to manage this work for us as well as to similarly arrange for reproduction.
In order to control the functions of the various organs and tissues and to regulate the rate at which they reproduce themselves, the nerves extend their terminal branches, not only into every tissue, but into every microscopical unit of such tissue, and the part of the cell which represents the nerve terminal is the inner structure called the nucleus.Now it will be obvious that the more the two nervous systems are worked the greater will be their depletion of lecithin and the more need there will be for fresh supplies of phosphorus in the daily food rations.
The person who works hard, whether it be manual labour or brain work, needs food and rest at intervals in order that the nerves may recuperate and replenish their stocks of lecithin.
A goodly proportion of uncooked foods rich in phosphorus must be supplied to make good the wear and tear, and the digestion must equally be efficient if these food-stuffs are to become assimilated.
Cooking of food to a large extent breaks down the organic phosphorus salts and makes them inorganic. In this state they are of but little use to the body. Poor digestion associated with putrefactive fermentation equally converts the organic salts into inorganic ones. These pass into the blood and are promptly eliminated by the kidneys as waste (phosphaturia) and thus they never reach the nerves at all.
We must remember that phosphorus is usually found in natural foods bound up with the proteid and especially with that proteid which has to do with the reproduction of the species. For this reason man instinctively resorts to the use of egg-yolks, and to the various seeds (such as nuts, wheat, barley, etc.) because of their rich phosphorus content.
These proteid-bound phosphorus salts can only be properly utilised when the hydrochloric acid of the stomach juice is well formed, for it converts them into acid salts which are readily absorbed. Therefore to ensure free absorption we must always remember to give the phosphorus-containing foods with such meals as will cause free secretion of the gastric acid.
When fermentation is active and the stomach juices are weakened the germs of the intestines rapidly break up the phosphorus constituents of the proteids and make them inorganic. Therefore the first thing to do when a person is found to be suffering from phosphaturia is to stop the intestinal fermentation by a right diet, clear the bowels of their accumulated waste poisons and give the nerves plenty of rest. Another consideration to bear in mind is that the nerves need fat wherewith to build up the lecithin. An excessive fermentative sourness of the stomach makes the food so acid when sent into the bowels that the bile, pancreatic and other intestinal juices cannot neutralise them, and so the fats themselves are not emulsified and digested, which fully accounts for the mental depression and debility of which these patients complain.
People who are suffering from “nerves” in any form need plenty of pure fat (fresh dairy butter, cream, nut butter, fruit-oils, etc.) and an abundance of natural fresh vegetable products at once rich in phosphorus and iron and in organic alkaline acid-neutralising earthy salts. These arrest fermentation and so enable the phosphorus and the fat to become duly assimilated.
CANARY VERSUS JAMAICA BANANAS.
R.B., Lincoln, would like to know if there is very much difference, as regards food value, between the Jamaica and Canary banana. “I have heard it said that the Jamaica is only fit for the dust-heap. Well, I cannot very easily think it is so useless, and at the same time I have an idea that the Canary is the better of the two. I should be very pleased to know if you think there is much difference between them.”
The difference between Jamaica and Canary bananas is due to the length of time necessary for them to reach us from their place of growth. It takes, I believe, nearly twice as long for a ship to travel from Jamaica as from the Canary Islands. Hence the fruit imported from the latter place can be picked in a much riper condition than would be the case with the Jamaica article. This probably accounts for the better quality and flavour of the Canary banana. Besides this the climate may have some determining influence. To say that the Jamaica bananas should be discarded because they are of a less satisfactory food value or because their flavour is less developed is uncalled for. The disparity in price is also very marked, so that the poor can readily procure the Jamaica banana where they would not be in a position to afford the better class of fruit coming from the Canaries. I have discussed this subject in p.34 of my book, The Truth about Sugar.
H. Valentine Knaggs.
