Dyspepsia | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1879

Dyspepsia.

THE benefits that dyspeptics derive from eating only two meals a day are: First, they secure a more perfect digestion of the food taken, and hence get a better quality of the blood. Second, they are not so liable to overeat—many patients find it much easier to abstain entirely from food for a time than to stop when they know they have eaten all they ought. This is especially true with those that have morbid appetites. Third, it gives the stomach a better opportunity to rest. With most dyspeptics digestion goes on slowly, and often one meal is not fully digested before the next is forced upon it. The stomach is a muscular organ, and the digestion of food is greatly aided by muscular action; but if the muscles are kept constantly at work, as they will be so long as there is food in the stomach to be digested, they soon become so exhausted as to be of but little if any assistance. Every muscle of the body requires time for rest as well as work, and it gains force and strength during the periods of rest. For many patients two meals a day will secure this much more perfectly than three.

There are some for whom for the same reasons one meal a day is still better than two. I am fully of the opinion that the majority of the people in this country eat much more food than they really need. They eat more to gratify a perverted appetite than to satisfy the actual wants of the system. The appetites of many are perverted from childhood up. Children are fed on pastries, sweetmeats, candies, spices, and rich food, till they have no relish for a plain, nutritious diet; the result is, that by the time they arrive at adult age (if they live so long,) they are dwarfed in size, their teeth are decayed, their beauty faded, their hair gray, their health gone, and they barely live, without enjoying life or knowing much of its real pleasures. All old people in this and every country have been uncommonly small eaters. Thomas Parr of Shropshire, who lived to the age of one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months was a poor farmer, and obliged to maintain himself by his daily labor, living on plain farmer's fare all his life. In his one hundred and fifty-second year, the king of England, desirous of seeing so great a rarity, induced him to go to London. While there he was feasted from the royal table and his mode of living so totally changed that he died nine months after.

Henry Jenkins of Yorkshire, England, lived to the great age of one hundred and sixty-nine years. He was a poor fisherman, living simply all his life, and at the age of one hundred could swim across the Thames.

Louis Cornaro, an Italian, was broken down in health at forty, and was informed by his physicians that he could not live more than two or three months; yet, by adopting a simple diet of less than two pounds of solid and liquid food per day, prolonged his life and enjoyed good health to over one hundred and twenty years.

The early Christians were exceedingly simple in all their habits of eating and drinking, often going one or two days without food.

You may lay it down as a rule, to which the exceptions are few, that those persons who eat fast and in large quantities, live fast and die soon; they are universally short lived, and generally die suddenly of acute diseases.

Hot-house plants are all short lived. Those plants, trees, and animals that take their nutriment slowly, and grow slowly, live the longest, and vice versa. I have had several patients whom I have advised for a short time to take but one meal a day, and the result has almost without exception been good. This one good meal was more perfectly digested, made better blood, and the blood made better oxygenated by the lungs, and better assimilated by the tissue than it would have been if more food had been eaten. This plan was pursued for a short time only, till the system was brought into a better condition.

Acidity of the stomach, heartburn, flatulence, and many other unpleasant symptoms will soon disappear on this plan. Several goblets of soft water may be drank during the day, but none should be used during, or just after the meal. The amount and kind of food used must depend upon the phase of dyspepsia the patient is troubled with, but many are able to eat and digest varieties of food when they eat once a day, that they could not by eating three times. There are few, however, for whom we would advise this plan. —Herald of Health.