Library of Blogress: Healthy Living Information

Though air is not generally considered a food, the oxygen secured from the air is really more essential to life than any food element. We can live without food for months; we can live without water for many days, but we cannot live without oxygen for five minutes. This fact is not recognized generally, and the breathing of impure air which has been enclosed and breathed over and over again, has caused many very serious diseases. There is hardly a home in which proper precaution is taken to secure thorough ventilation during the winter months.

Air is really a food. It must be looked upon as a food because, as I have already mentioned, oxygen is more necessary to life than any other element.

No matter what precaution we may take to build up vigorous health by eating and drinking proper food in proper quantities, but little can be accomplished unless you are careful to see that pure air is supplied at all times. Pure cold air is one of the greatest tonics in the world. I do not personally believe that it has ever injured any one, except where the temperature has been so low, and exposure so great, as to actually freeze a part of the body. Colds, though apparently produced in numerous instances by exposure, are really made possible because of the existing impure condition of the blood. In other words, if enjoying perfectly normal health, there is not the slightest danger of a cold. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the mass, being digested by the stomach, assumes a condition that indicates the process of stomach digestion has been completed, it is allowed to pass the pylorus and enter the duodenum, which is a part of the small intestines. Here the food comes in contact with two other digestive juices that are poured forth under normal conditions as needed–the bile and pancreatic juices. The bile is alkaline in character; it neutralizes the gastric juice, emulsifies the fats, making them soluble, and it also has antiseptic qualities which act upon the entire intestinal canal. The pancreatic juice is similar to the saliva of the mouth and performs important offices, though in addition to digesting starchy elements it also digests aluminous–muscle making–and fat.

From the duodenum the food enters the principal part of the small intestines. Here it comes in contact with another fluid called the intestinal juice. This juice possesses the power peculiar to itself of digesting all the various food elements, thus practically completing the work of digestion. The small intestines are supplied with a very large number of glands which absorb large quantities of the nourishment made ready by the various digestive juices with which the food had previously come in contact. From the small intestines the food is slowly forced into the colon where absorption still continues though in a much more limited degree.

For a technical description of the process of absorption of the nourishing elements of the food, I refer you to the following by Dr. J. H. Kellogg: Read the rest of this entry »

Though I have tried to avoid all possible use of technical terms, in the following very abbreviated description of the digestive organs and their processes, their use will be occasionally required.

In order to make the work of digestion as clear as possible without a lengthy description, we will follow the food in its travels through the alimentary canal, explaining the actions of the organs and various digestive juices with which it comes in contact.

After food has been called for by appetite and has gone through the first process of digestion by thorough mastication, it is swallowed and allowed to enter the stomach. Now immediately upon entrance, this food comes in contact with the gastric juice which is secreted by the peptic glands, and which exudes in tiny drops from the inner surface of the stomach like perspiration from the pores of the skin. Not only the quality but the quantity of this digestive juice furnished depends greatly upon how much food is needed in other words on how hungry you are at the time the food is eaten. The feeling of hunger, the ability to heartily enjoy the food eaten, is an unmistakable indication that there will be secreted a full supply of these digestive juices, that will be poured forth copiously as the process of eating and digesting continue; and the more in- tensely the food is enjoyed, the more each morsel is dwelt upon in the act of mastication by the sense of taste in the endeavor to secure its most delicious flavor before swallowing, the more freely does the gastric juice flow, and, naturally, the more perfectly is the work of stomach digestion performed. Read the rest of this entry »

It would be well, also, to note that the retaining of a normal appetite–of that sense of taste which enables you to discriminate not only as to the character of food needed, but also as to quantity–depends largely on perfect mastication.

The message of warning which taste gives in connection with eating is: “That while any taste is left in a mouthful of food in process of mastication or sucking, it is not yet in condition to be passed on to the stomach; and what remains after taste has ceased is not fit for the stomach.”—Horace Fletcher.

If the food is bolted, if the sense of taste is outraged continually, its power naturally becomes dulled and you are left without a guide, which should at all times clearly indicate the character of the food needed to nourish the body, and which should refuse to recognize any flavor in any food after the needs of the system have been supplied.

One can readily imagine the condition of a man under the circumstances described. He has no definite idea as to what to eat, and his only guide is the feeling of fullness in the stomach. Read the rest of this entry »