Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New HygieneSinclair, Upton
Science
Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene
Sinclair, Upton
Hygiene
“Experience indicates that appetite does not lead to a diet fixed in
amount or constituents, but moves in undulating waves or cycles. The
men who took part in the experiment were encouraged, after any of
the symptoms which seemed to be associated with high proteid (such
as heaviness, sleepiness, stiffness, or soreness after exercise,
or catching cold), to cut down on their proteid and substitute fat
to restrain the gastric juice. This advice was intended to make
application of the theories of Folin that we usually carry a reservoir
of proteid, enough to supply our needs for body-building for a
fortnight. If this reservoir is exhausted, proteid starvation occurs
and the body feeds on itself; if it is filled too far it overflows and
causes the evils of excessive proteid. If this theory is correct, the
art of eating may consist largely in maintaining a golden mean, such
that the proteid reservoir is neither empty nor overflowing much. Many
persons fear to reduce their proteid to the Chittenden minimum for fear
of proteid starvation; but the experience of those who have tried it
would seem to show that this fear is groundless, _provided_ no violence
is done to natural appetite. This may be trusted, so it would appear,
to raise a warning in the form of ‘nitrogen hunger,’ before the danger
point is reached.” In other words, the body will ask in the language
of hunger for proteid food, if you are not eating as much as you
should. Professor Fisher considers that an amount of meat equivalent to
about one small chop will supply all the proteid necessary in the daily
ration, since proteid is also consumed in bread, potatoes and nearly
all other foods.
It might be added that one of the writers has found the remedy for
continual bilious headaches in the rigid exclusion from his diet of
all foods that are rich in proteids, including meat, fish, eggs, milk,
cheese, peas and beans; and maintains weight and working efficiency
upon such amount of proteid as he derives from ordinary breadstuffs.
He has found that the craving for high proteid foods soon disappears
if it is not gratified; and that the quantity of bread, potatoes,
etc., which the average person would eat at dinner and supper supplies
all the nitrogen which his system needs, without leaving any to cause
autointoxication.
IV
HOW DIGESTION IS ACCOMPLISHED
In order not to interrupt the narrative of the Yale experiments,
we have foregone defining certain of the technical terms which it
was necessary to use. It will be well, before going further, to
give a simple description of the manner in which the food we eat is
transformed in the body into tissue building material and energy: a
process the many parts of which are grouped by physiologists under the
name of Metabolism.
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