Digestion
The habit of eating too much of the right things, of eating things that have no food value, and of eating too frequently is the cause of much of the ills in the world. Gluttony fills the hospitals, the asylums, the graveyards; it leads to mental, moral and physical degeneration, and results in national decay.
Most people have lost the sense of natural hunger and have developed an abnormal sense of what is called appetite. There is a vital difference between genuine hunger and false appetite. The former is a natural sign that the system requires food for the repairing of bone, muscle, nerve, etc. The latter is an artificially cultivated sense which is impossible to satisfy.
The feelings in the stomach such as emptiness, cravings, gnawing or faintness generally are not indications that more food is needed, but the unnatural cravings of an abused, overused, inflamed stomached. REAL HUNGER is not confined to the stomach; it is felt allover the body. Most of us have developed perverted feelings in the stomach because of years and years of abuse.
“Daily abused, the digestive organs cannot do their work well. A poor quality of blood is made, and thus, through improper eating, the whole machinery is crippled. Give the stomach less to do. It will recover if proper care is shown in regard to the quality and quantity of food eaten.
Many eat too rapidly. Others eat at one meal varieties of food that do not agree. If men and women would only remember how greatly they afflict the soul when they afflict the stomach, and how deeply Christ is dishonored when the stomach is abused, they would deny the appetite and thus give the stomach opportunity to recover its healthy action. While sitting at the table we may do medical missionary work by eating and drinking to the glory of God.” Counsels on Health, pg. 577
Appetite is a hard and merciless tyrant, whose victims number is the billions around the world. The more one yields to demands, the more inflamed and enlarged the stomach becomes, until it finally increases to twice its natural size, and then usually sags in a very unbecoming manner. Instead of empting itself and contracting after each meal, the stomach loses the power to expel its contents as it should.
The fermentation, decaying food, constantly present in the folds and pockets of a dilated stomach, causes irritation and stomach pains which are mistaken for hunger. To relieve this distress by taking more food only aggravates the problem. Indigestion is soon followed by many kinds of gastritis and dyspepsia or catarrhal conditions (mucous) and stomach ulcers. It is through this process that a suitable seedbed is provided for eternal growths including cancer.
The stomach is the battleground for almost every human being. What man puts into his stomach either nourishes him or destroys him. Man fills his stomach with seemingly harmless substances, but when mixed during digestion, causes gases that poison and permeate throughout the whole body. Unwise combinations of even good food cause fermentation in the digestive tract that have disagreeable and untimely results which can prove to be very serious. Nerve exhaustion and digestive incompetence are very intimately bound up together.