THIS method combines three measures, starvation, elimination and rest. It is indicated in the obese who suffer from severe “auto-intoxication.”
As stated previously, most fat people suffer from various degrees of self-poisoning. Their altered glandular function and lowered bodily resistance predisposes to infections of the large bowel and gall bladder. Reducing their weight without reducing their toxemia as well, results in further lowering their vitality so that they become easy prey to disease in its various forms.
Cosmetic considerations likewise demand a concomitant reduction in toxin absorption or else the slenderized individual will look old, jaded and wrinkled instead of developing a youthful and rejuvenated appearance which scientific weight reduction brings about.
This “treatment complex” of starvation, elimi nation and rest is particularly indicated in that diagnostic complex, “fair, fat and forty.”
Patients with torpid livers, impaired pancreatic function, abnormal gall bladders and atonic, or diverticulated colons do particularly well on this regimen.
It is advisable, of course, for the patient to have had a careful health survey, using all modern diagnostic methods, before starting on this regimen. The long diagnostic way around is generally the shortest therapeutic way to health.
Elimination
The patient starts his regimen by as thorough an emptying of the entire twenty odd feet of intestine as is possible. After repeated and thorough X-ray studies the writer is convinced that there is no equal to castor oil for bringing this about. It is the only proven remedy which will empty those little pockets in the intestinal wall called diverticula which are usually due to long standing colonic infection.
Saline laxatives are not used until the intestine is relatively empty inasmuch as they increase the absorption of toxines by putting the intestinal contents into solution.
Two ounces of castor oil to which is added ten drops of the fresh tincture of iodine is recommended. The iodine acts as an intestinal antiseptic and there is reason to believe that sufficient of this iodine is absorbed to temporarily at least activate the thyroid gland.
After this preliminary purgation the patient starts upon his starvation routine. For three or four days the patient takes one to two teaspoonfuls of magnesium or sodium sulphate in a glass of comfortably hot water shortly after awakening in the morning. This salt tends to increase the flow of bile in the liver and to influence favorably the drain-age of the gall bladder. This increased flow of bile in turn acts as an intestinal antiseptic.
Starvation
This must be absolute for the first few days. Patients should have no apprehension about any possible ill effects resulting from starvation. Its use in the treatment of diabetes is well known. Individuals have survived fasts of thirty to forty days and our method requires a maximal fast of but seven days.
The patient should know just what to expect in the way of symptoms while fasting. On the first day there may be a feeling of general discomfort, an “all gone” feeling and a craving for food. On the next day the head may feel heavy, the breath may be offensive and the mouth taste badly. A distrust in the merits of the method or a fear of con-sequences may develop on the third day. The patient may become irritable or depressed.
After the third day the feeling of hunger disappears and a feeling of internal cleanliness and mental clearness and optimism ensues. On the fifth or sixth day, not later than the seventh, hunger re-turns and it is my practice to start moderate feeding directly an eagerness for food returns. A glass of orange juice is given every four to five hours on the day following the end of the fasting period.
On the second day one glass of warm, skimmed milk is given at breakfast. One-half head of lettuce with lemon or orange juice is taken for lunch and a baked potato with one butter ball eaten for dinner. A glass of orange juice is taken at mid-forenoon and mid-afternoon. This diet, about 400 calories in all, should then be maintained or in-creased according to the condition of the patient or the amount of weight lost or desired to be lost. The menus submitted under Method I may then be followed, but in no case should dieting be too rigidly followed. Too rapid a reduction or the losing of too great a quantity of fat may be harmful.
For the intestinal sluggishness following the fourth or fifth day of starvation the writer favors the use of the saline enema one rounded teaspoonful of salt to two quarts of water. Continue this daily until a maintenance diet has been adopted. The writer usually gives alkalis such as calcium carbonate during the first few starvation days to combat the attendant acidosis.
Rest
Exert yourself very little during this radical reducing regimen. I urge most of my patients to spend most of their time in bed and to give up all business or other engagements while taking this cure. Some patients have attended to business during the entire ordeal but this is not recommended.
Results
As a result of the above reducing method the patient’s fat, and not tissue fluid alone, has actually been reduced by many pounds. And the intestinal toxaemia and its underlying cause will, in many cases, have been entirely eradicated. If this system of reducing is repeated from time to time weight reduction and health promotion will be assured. But you should always be under your physician’s care when placing yourself upon such a drastic regimen.
The public has become morbid on the subject of roughage, vitamins, mineral salts, alcohol, tobacco, exercise, laboratory tests and periodic health examinations. Commercial advertisers are largely responsible for this for they persuade us to use a particular kind of food, beverage, smoke or exercising apparatus by scare-line copy or unscientific information. Physicians through their writings, lectures or office remarks try to point out health fallacies and dangers and attempt in every way possible to make constructive and individualized suggestions as to health maintenance or improvement. To generalize in dietary instructions is almost as dangerous as to generalize in prescription writing.