This section is from the book "Healthy Life Magazine Volume V", by Various Authors. Also available from Amazon: The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life.
Mrs H.W. writes: - I should be very glad if you would give me enlightenment on one or two points about my diet. I am suffering from a somewhat dilated stomach, also a catarrhal condition of nose, throat and alimentary canal, with constipation and much flatulence in the bowels. My teeth are decaying quickly, my nails have got softer, and I have become anaemic and generally debilitated, being unable to properly assimilate my food. All my joints crack when moved, and the knee joints creak as well. Is this a uric acid condition, or do you think it merely due to a lack of nourishment, causing a lack of synovial fluid? The joints are not swollen and not painful, they merely crack. My whole system seems to be over-acid, and my mouth gets sore and ulcerated. I have got very thin, having lost a stone in twelve months.
I notice that you always advise for dilated stomach greatly restricting the liquid part of the diet. Will you tell me just how much one may drink in a day, because when I go without drinking my constipation and other troubles are worse and the urine gets thick and muddy.
You also deprecate milk. This puzzled me until you explained to a correspondent last month in The Healthy Life. Will you tell me if the same applies to dried milk - will it tend to increase intestinal trouble? I am anxious to know this because I have been relying somewhat on Emprote and Hygiama lately, for I had got so that I could scarcely digest anything.
Do you consider it better to use the enema than to take a mild aperient? I do not want to start with the enema again if I can possibly manage to do without, because I found that my bowels depended upon it. And that is why I want to ask if it is absolutely necessary when on an antiseptic diet to entirely avoid fruit. I find it so necessary to keep the bowels working naturally.
I do want you to answer me these questions, because I have got so worried and fearful (people's theories are so varied) that I scarcely dare eat any food at all. I am at present taking only two meals daily (I like the two-meal plan best): at eleven a.m. and 6 p.m. I take a cup of weak coffee on rising, without milk or sugar - this warm drink seems to start the peristaltic action and I then get bowel action. I think of changing the coffee for Sanum Tonic Tea or Dandelion Coffee.
At eleven o'clock I have an egg with Winter's "Maltweat" bread and almond butter, and some conservatively cooked vegetable (celery or carrot or spinach).
At six p.m. I have one or two baked apples, a teaspoonful or two of malted nuts, or Emprote, and more "Maltweat" bread and butter.
At four p.m. I take a cup of barley water or carrot water, and at bedtime another cup of barley water.
Do you think that if I went on to a milk diet for a time it would do good?
This correspondent seems to be suffering from auto-toxaemia, or self-poisoning in a severe form, and a condition of what is termed arterio-sclerosis or premature old age. Associated with it are evidently symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which is affecting her joints and teeth. It is not one of ordinary gout or uric acid poisoning. The trouble no doubt has been caused by past errors of diet, so that the present efforts at reform have come too late to be of service to her. Something more than diet is now needed to clear the acids and toxins from the system. It is not a simple case of digestive catarrh, for the whole body is affected. The present diet will answer very well as it stands.
The first thing to do is to obtain a well-fitting dilatation belt. This must have leg straps and firmly support the lower half of the abdomen. The next thing is to promote skin action so as to encourage the clearing out of poisons along this line of elimination. Vapour baths, wet-sheet packs or alkaline hot baths can effect this purpose. An alkaline hot bath should be of a temperature of 105 degrees Fahr. or more, and to the bath should be added ¼ lb. of bicarbonate of soda and ¼ lb. packet of "Robin" starch. She should remain as long as possible in this so as to well clear the acids from the skin and induce as much skin action or perspiration as possible. The first baths must be of very short duration, and she should be careful to avoid chill after the bath; it is best to lie prone and completely relaxed for half-an-hour at least after the bath. Finally massage and Swedish movements directed to the entire back will help to disencumber the central nervous system, which is evidently very badly depleted of its vital force. It is, of course, a pity the correspondent cannot get away to a properly organised Nature-Cure home and have the continuous attention and treatment which her condition really necessitates.
H. Valentine Knaggs.
 
Continue to: