p. 442 | EAT SLOWLY by Dr. C. W. Lyman

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 14, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 28.

EAT SLOWLY.

By Dr. C. W. Lyman

FIRST, slow eating as a habit gives time for complete mastication, which also must be habitual. Next comes the matter of allowing time for food to become mingled with saliva, and for that saliva to act on it while in the mouth, whatever the consistence of the food may be. To merely wet and liquefy dry food is but a tithe of what the saliva performs. Many persons, indeed, bolt their softer foods and wash down the drier ones with tea or ice water, as if believing nothing more were called for. A ferment in the saliva, called ptyalin, acts on starchy food and partly digests it, by converting it into dextrin.

However, this is not all that is done, by any means. Recent experiments show that when our food is first well acted upon by saliva, all the active secretions of the stomach are increased, its muscular workings are stimulated, and absorption is increased in amount and rapidity.

It is a very important part of digestion that is carried on in the mouth and throat. In the latter an abundant secretion comes out to meet the food, containing thousands of living cells, supplied by the blood, and expressly bent on the errand of preparing the food, in some way, to be well received in the stomach, and to return with it into the blood.

This product seems to be chiefly furnished by the tonsils. These vascular little bodies are thus seen to have a very real and important work.—Dr. C. W. Lyman.