The machinery which makes up the mechanical connections between intake of food and the release of waste materials, is the most delicately balanced and the most intricately designed of any machinery in the world.
Naturally, any machinery needs oil. The better the oil used, the longer the machinery will run without damage. The same thing holds true with the oil from which you make bile, because this soapy oil is what really keeps your digestive machinery running smoothly.
Just as you would supply your automobile with the best oil, so should you supply your digestive machine with better bile. The best grade of bile is made from pork fat and olive oil. These two fats have the greater amount of liquid olein, and the oleic acid fats have the greater lubricating qualities.
Certainly, you have heard of olive oil being used to aid gall stone colic? In fact, an old time patent medicine, used for intestinal and gall bladder trouble, contained two alkalizing powders and a four ounce bottle of olive oil. This remedy did a good work. However, old time physicians used to take their gall bladder patients away from any fat in their diet. Now, the physician, who knows, will give pure cream as a part of a gall bladder patient’s diet.
You now see why the writer is so sure that you constipated bellyachers do not like fat. If you had always eaten a moderate quantity with enough sour foods to alkalize the fat, you would not have gall bladder trouble. What you do not eat hurts you.
The lack of proper oil is not the only mechanical trouble you constipated bellyachers cause your digestive machinery. Running with insufficient oil has finally caused cylinder, piston, and connecting rod trouble. The muscles of the colon are really the piston rings of your machine, except that they are flexible. Each ring of the colon is a circular ring of muscle. When the bowel becomes so full, the nerve bell automatically gives the signal for a squeeze down. Then each muscle ring begins a succession of squeeze con-tractions until the final ring sends the waste material out of the body.
Lack of good bile oil is the start of ring trouble. Dryness slows up mechanical action. It not only slows it, but sometimes stops it by the compactness of dry stool. The more compact and the smaller the stool, the longer it takes for the warning signal to be sounded.
Perhaps you do hear the signal, and pay no attention to it. Continued inattention to nature’s warning puts a great strain upon the rings of muscle. After a time, these muscles become weakened through stress and strain. The result is a lack of timing. Whenever your timing gear gets bad, your motor does not run smoothly. Right now, you constipated bellyachers start to do the wrong thing. Instead of making a good oil and supplying a smooth bulk, you start forcing your motor. You take harsh laxatives to cause machinery movement. You take a pill to cause better ring action. That is a strain! You take salts to cause a flush out. Be careful; you are putting water in your oil. You know what that means !
Taking laxatives continually means that you must jump from one kind to another in the hope that you will find something to keep your bowl machinery going. And, it is really surprising how long one can make the body eliminating machinery run. But, what a bother! What a headache! What trouble you must pay for, FINALLY.
If you constipated bellyachers had only worn out your automobile, you could buy a new one. But you cannot have a new ma-chine; you cannot get parts, even. So, it is a repair job for you. Better do it before the old machine is chased off the road.
“Hi, Yi! What will I do?” The writer heard you.
The answer is simple. While you get ready to help yourself, have your physician prescribe a good bulk, and, at his discretion, a bile salt preparation, or an alkalizing aperient, to supply you temporary aid.
A good bulk will help you to restore the ring squeeze action to the colon muscles. Please remember; if you had your arm tied up to your chest for a few years, when you untied it, you could not pick up a water glass. You would have to train your arm muscles a long time before they would become normal. That is just what you will have to do in training your colon muscles if they have been ruined over a period of years. Cramped colon muscle action is called spastic colon.
Bulk preparations produce larger and smoother stools. A larger stool, made by bulk absorbtion of moisture, eases the muscle contraction and prevents griping. However, bulk must be taken quite regularly each night in order to restore muscle power. Your colon muscles are like watch springs. . You must wind a good watch at the same time every night; not at odd hours, if you would have it keep good time. You, also, must take bulk with equal regularity. Do you get the point?
If you need an aid to the bulk action, take a mild aperient laxative for a time. Take your aperient laxative in divided doses three times a day. Gradually reduce the size of the dose, not the frequency. When three of the smallest doses become too much per day, drop to two doses a day; then, one dose a day, or only two or three times a week. Depend upon your bulk entirely if you can. Do not be discouraged; it may take from six months to two years for you to restore colon muscle action, according to how long you have been chronically constipated.
In the meantime, start living right; that is, eating the things that you need to make your own digestive lubricant. Eat plenty of sour food to make lye (alkali), and eat a little fat. These two items of food will make you a good motor oil. Good soapy oil (bile) makes your machinery run easily, smoothly, and efficiently. You can restore smooth action to colon muscles if they are not entirely worn out.
If you will follow the chemical eating chart found within these pages, you can make sure of getting sufficient tarts and fats in your diet. Pork fat is the best type. Olive oil or olive oil dressing is a very good thing to use.
Many people believe that butter supplies their need for fat. That is not true. Butter is an emulsion of fat, and not a good lubricating fat. See if you can get good results by greasing your buggy wheels with butter.
Butter contains ninety-four percent glycerides of fatty acids, which is more than is contained by any other fat of any kind.
Another, and better, reason that butter does not make a good lubricant for the bowels is that it cracks up in the stomach by the enzyme ferment called gastric lipase. Gastric lipase is strong enough to crack up butter, cream, and the fat of egg yolk. But, gastric lipase is NOT strong enough to change pork fat, olive oil, and other greases.
Let us prove to the housewife that butter is different and more easily cracked up, or changed chemically, than other fats. When you cook with butter and get it a little too hot, do you not notice the peculiar acrid odor? Well, you get that odor with no other fat, unless you cook over and over and over with the same fat. Want any more proof?
You can use butter with starches when you cannot use any other grease. However, butter should be added to plain starch like baked potatoe, or rice, or rolled oats; not to bread. Remember, bread already has too much grease in it, and you must keep heavy grease away from starches if you want to digest either starch or grease.
Some physicians may ask you to replace butter with oleomargarine in cases of gall bladder trouble. They are right in one way, for oleomargarine is a better grade lubricating oil. But, it is wrong if you use oleo with starches, for you will not have enough alkali to handle such a grease mixed with starch. Too much grease with starch prevents starch digestion. Undigested starches form putrifactive acid gas and alcohol; both irritating to the colon, and producing mucis colitis.
Another, and final answer to eating more oils and fats such as meat fats and olive oil is; whatever amount of these fats you do not digest keep right on acting as a lubricant while passing through the body. You really get a double action when you eat oily fats without starches; one the formation of better bile; the other just plain machine oil.
Other fats are not as good as pork fat and olive oil, but are certainly better than none at all. So, see that you get a small amount of some fat every day.
Below, you will find a chart showing you the best fats to use, and the next best down the line. Some fats contain more palmatic and stearic acid than they do oleic. The palmatic and stearic fats from a bile cholesterol somewhat waxy and more solid. That is why cholesterol is sometimes found within the walls of the arteries, producing arterial, and heart disease.
FAT AND OIL CLASSIFICATION AS CONSTIPATION AIDS Best:Pork Fat, Olive Oil, Peanut Oil,Chiefly Oleic Fat. Next:Beef and MuttonOleic-Palmatic-Stearic. Next:Cotton Seed, Corn, Sesame Oils,Oleic and Linoleic. Next:Butter and Cream,Oleic-Palmatic-Butyric. Next:Palm and Coconut OilsPalmatic-Stearic-Linoleic.
Do not forego butter, milk, and cream. You get minerals, proteins, fats, and vitamins from these dairy products. Eat plenty. But do not depend upon them for bile fat. Eat other fats.
Now, you have the whole story concerning the trouble of BELLYACHES, and the cause. Reading this far, and following the eating chart listed in the next chapter, is all you need to start eating the correct way to aid in restoring health and maintaining it. However, the rest of the book gives you many reasons why you should eat right and tells you what you may run into if you do not. Perhaps you should continue.