It has been observed that health is
result of what one assimilates, not what one necessarily eats. We accept lots of food into our bodies, but only that which has been properly assimilated can be utilized for rebuilding and repairing cells and malfunction areas. Proper assimilation is acquired by "drinking solid foods and chewing liquid food." This is an old and true axiom. We should thoroughly chew solid foods, mixing saliva with them until food becomes a liquid; then we drink it. The liquid foods must be swished (or chewed) in mouth, then swallowed. The saliva thoroughly mixed with foods is key that opens up doors of digestion. Without mixing saliva with food, balance of digestive juices are not activated for good assimilation. By gulping, "inhaling" or bolting food down without properly mixing saliva with it, we only get eight to ten percent of its value. By properly chewing we can raise this to forty or forty-five percent. The balance is generally cellulose or indigestible fiber.
We not only receive far better health, but also save money. Food is one of our largest expenditures, and if we can get four to six times better assimilation, this promises superior health and a happier life. With one fourth or one third of food we have been used to eating, we can receive much more power and energy.
Another must for good health is to slow down eating procedure, relax and be happy. Discuss pleasant things during mealtime, even laugh a little.
Such foods as soups, gruels, porridges, and purees contain so little solid matter that bulk, considerable though it may be when food is eaten, is soon reduced to a very small volume. On this account liquid foods are almost always constipating. The only exceptions are those liquid foods which contain much sugar, acids, or fats.
Pasty cereals such as oatmeal mush, are decidedly constipating in their influence, because of their pasty consistency and little mastication which they receive. New bread, hot biscuits, "noodles," and doughy foods of all sorts are likewise objectionable.
If above principles are not applied, constipation and/or indigestion can result. Premature old age and death, misery and even crime originate from constipation more than from any other bodily disorder. Constipation is not in itself a disease, but is a symptom, cause of which may be disease or simply neglect.
Indigestion is basically poor assimilation or difficulty in processing food in order to get proper value from it. The use of aluminum- based digestive tablets sold on market give only temporary relief and aluminum poisoning is a side-effect or after-effect. However, by eating nutritiously and supplementing our diets with a good quality herbal colon formula (not to mention stabilized probiotics), we can set ourselves on a much better path.
One California doctor who advised his patient to restrain his desire for bowel movements at night and "save it till next morning" so that "he might have a well-formed stool," had not first conception of normal function of colon.
That one bowel movement a day is normal and efficient evacuation of bowels is another error which is universally entertained. One bowel movement a day is a positive indication of constipation. X-ray examinations of colon after a test meal shown that in persons whose bowels move once a day body wastes are usually retained for fifty hours or more. Hurst, of London, and not a few other authorities finding this condition almost universal have been led to regard it as normal. But in this they are certainly in error.
X-ray examinations show that in eight hours from beginning of a meal process of digestion has been completed, digested food has been absorbed, and unusable residue has been pushed half way through colon, in other words, is within two and a half feet of lower opening of colon. In eight hours food has traveled more than twenty-five feet or ten times distance which remains to be traveled.
