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True Love at Home
365
food, they may eat of simple food until they cannot well eat more.
This is a mistake. Many professed health reformers are nothing less
than gluttons. They lay upon the digestive organs so great a burden
that the vitality of the system is exhausted in the effort to dispose
of it. It also has a depressing influence upon the intellect, for the
brain nerve power is called upon to assist the stomach in its work.
Overeating, even of the simplest food, benumbs the sensitive nerves
of the brain and weakens its vitality. Overeating has a worse effect
upon the system than overworking; the energies of the soul are more
effectually prostrated by intemperate eating than by intemperate
working.
The digestive organs should never be burdened with a quantity or
quality of food which it will tax the system to appropriate. All that
is taken into the stomach above what the system can use to convert
into good blood, clogs the machinery; for it cannot be made into
either flesh or blood, and its presence burdens the liver and produces
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a morbid condition of the system. The stomach is overworked in its
efforts to dispose of it, and then there is a sense of languor, which
is interpreted to mean hunger; and without allowing the digestive
organs time to rest from their severe labor, to recruit their energies,
another immoderate amount is taken into the stomach, to set the
weary machinery again in motion. The system receives less nour-
ishment from too great a quantity of food, even of the right quality,
than from a moderate quantity taken at regular periods.
My brother, your brain is benumbed. A man who disposes of
the quantity of food that you do should be a laboring man. Exercise
is important to digestion and to a healthy condition of body and
mind. You need physical exercise. You move and act as if you were
wooden, as though you had no elasticity. Healthy, active exercise
is what you need. This will invigorate the mind. Neither study nor
violent exercise should be engaged in immediately after a full meal;
this would be a violation of the laws of the system. Immediately
after eating there is a strong draft upon the nervous energy. The brain
force is called into active exercise to assist the stomach; therefore,
when the mind or body is taxed heavily after eating, the process of
digestion is hindered. The vitality of the system, which is needed to
carry on the work in one direction, is called away and set to work in
another.