Defective Food Analysis - Continued. Suboxidation

As has already been suggested, there are those who suffer little, if any, from digestive disturbance, because they are en-endowed by nature with great vitality and organic strength.

They can "digest anything", can eat at any time, anything their palate calls for, and never suffer the discomforts of indigestion. One's first thought might be, How fortunate are these! but that is not entirely true of them; for their carelessness and ignorance in connection with alimentation will lead to a condition of ill health more remote perhaps, but as truly the result of dietetic errors as are those of the previous class and often these results prove more disastrous in the end.

Another Type

These diseases come under the head of metabolic disorders and, in the light of our comparison of the body to a stove, we will speak of them as conditions due to suboxidation and of the individual suffering from them as belonging to the suboxidation type. In these persons oxidation is imperfect, elimination of cell waste is incomplete, the tissues become clogged with substances which should be eliminated, the grates or kidneys do their work incompletely and "the stove smokes." The "fires are banked".

Rheumatism

As has already been made plain in a previous chapter, protein metabolism results in the formation of a solid ash which is in the form of urea, uric acid*, purin bodies, creatin, and certain other related substances. The most important of these is urea in which form most of the nitrogen is eliminated.

♦Uric acid (C3 H1 N4 O3) and the purin bodies as Xanthin, hypo-Xanthin, etc., are very closely related both chemically and physiologically to each other and to the caffeine (C8 H10 N4 O2) of tea and coffee and the theobromine (C7 H8 N4 O2) of cocoa. Uric acid and the purins result principally from the metabolism of the neucleo-pro-teins. Neucleo protein is abundant in meat, especially in glandular tissue as liver, sweetbreads, etc. A purin free diet is one in which meats, and tea and coffee are excluded. Purins are found also to an extent in some other foods as, e. g. eggs and legumes.

In order for this ash to be properly eliminated it must be finely divided by a process of oxidation and analysis. Imperfect metabolism is always associated with suboxidation and the result is an excess of an incompletely oxidized protein ash, which backs up in the blood stream as "clinkers." These accumulate in the joints producing rheumatism, so called, and in the muscles they are the cause of lumbago and myalgia; along the nerve sheaths their irritating presence may produce neuritis; accumulating in the blood vessel walls, they cause the arteries to lose their supple, elastic quality and to become hard, stiff, and brittle, which in the end means high blood pressure, an over-worked heart, and often apoplexy, angina pectoris, and heart failure. The kidneys in their effort to eliminate an excess of waste and that in an imperfectly prepared form are over-worked and Bright's disease may be the result.

While all of these conditions do not come to one individual, and to many only in minor degree, yet the ever increasing occurrence of these diseases with, because of them, the lowered life expectancy of the man past forty bears witness to the fact that metabolic disorders are becoming more prevalent and must be reckoned with in the struggle for race conservation.

A Cause Of Obesity

With defective protein metabolism is ever associated suboxidation of carbohydrate and fat, which still further clogs the body stove. (See page 68.) Carbohydrate, containing the same chemical elements as fat, is readily changed over in the tissues into fat, and these two food classes instead of being used up in energy production may be stored excessively as adipose tissue and this often at the expense of muscle.

Important Conditions

So in this type we have the obese, rheumatic, gouty individual, short of breath, for whom exercise becomes difficult thus adding another factor in the causation of the ever increasing condition of suboxidation.

But this "suboxidation type" of person has a good digestion with its accompanying good appetite, is fond of rich concentrated food and, unaware that his ills are directly due to his wrong habits of eating, he goes blindly on overloading his body furnace with fuel that it can not oxidize or eliminate and that only serves to increase the clinkers that hinder the burning of the vital fires.

Often it is not the bulk of the food intake, but its concentration in fats and sweets that determines its excess, and as we study further the question of food values it will be seen how easily food can be taken in excess of body needs.

While some may suffer from under feeding, yet in conditions of prosperity the diseases of the race due to improper alimentation are the result, almost entirely, of an excess of food, rather than the result of a deficient amount, a condition of underfeeding sometimes following on as the result of conditions caused primarily by a too abundant food intake.

Again we will enumerate the conditions necessary for perfect oxidation and thereby make evident the remedy.

1. Proper kind and amount of fuel - a properly balanced food supply in direct proportion to body needs.

2. Open drafts - (a) An ample supply of oxygen through the lungs, (b) The carrying of the oxygen to every cell by a free circulation of the blood, made possible only by exercise.

3. A finely divided ash, free from clinkers, so that thorough elimination may be possible. This may necessitate a limited intake of fuel for a time, giving the body a chance to burn up what is already on hand in excess.

Exercise

The subject of eating cannot be separated from that of the oxygen we breathe in, and the exercise we are able to take. An ample supply of oxygen must reach the lungs, but oxygen which goes no further than the lungs does the tissues no good. It must be carried throughout the body by the blood, a perfect circulation of which is possible only under conditions of more or less vigorous exercise. The freely moving blood stream carries both fuel and oxygen to the cells and thoroughly washes tissue, muscle, and organ from waste matter, carrying these wastes to their avenues of elimination.

Often the person suffering from suboxidation reaches the point where, because of obesity, fatty heart, or high blood pressure, exercise is impossible. Under these conditions the problem of increasing the circulation and the metabolic processes, becomes largely one of diet regulation, the exercise, of necessity, being largely passive as in massage and manual Swedish movements.

The intelligent treatment of obesity, with its allied conditions, by diet adjustment upon the basis of measuring the fuel supply is most satisfactory, the treatment of no abnormal condition promising more sure results.*

Defective food analysis, whether in the digestive tract or in the tissues, lessens the alkalinity of all body fluids producing a more nearly acid condition of the blood. Acids are formed as the result of fermentation and abnormal food decomposition in the intestinal tract, and as the result of cell waste and katabolism in the tissues, (†) These wastes not being properly oxidized and eliminated lessen the alkalinity of the blood because of the excess of acid products. (See footnote page 69.) As diseases of metabolism are so common and most of them due to an improper food supply, the understanding of food values, both as to quality and quantity, becomes a very important matter. How we may measure our food intake easily, but scientifically, and make this knowledge of practical value, we will consider in our next chapter.

*To those who desire to study more fully the dietetic treatment of obesity, we would recommend that amusing and instructive little book by Dr. L. H. Peters, "Diet and Health with Key to the Calories".

†(b) There is a difference in the acidity of the ash resulting from the metabolism of various foods, e. g. the metabolism of meat yields an acid ash, that of vegetables an alkaline ash. Most fruits are base forming, thus increasing the alkalinity of the blood, (See chapter VIII (Cellulose)) while cereals furnish in their metabolism a preponderance of acid.

"Our bodies, in other ivords, should be such good machines that their running will cause no creaking or jolting." - Hoxie.