Physiology of Digestion
81
There are large blood vessels in the limbs for the purpose of distributing
the life-giving current to all parts of the body. The fire you kindle in
your stomach is making your brain like a heated furnace. Eat much
more sparingly, and eat simple food, which does not require heavy
seasoning. Your animal passions should be starved, not pampered and
fed. The congestion of blood in the brain is strengthening the animal
instincts and weakening spiritual powers....
What you need is less temporal food and much more spiritual food,
more of the bread of life. The simpler your diet, the better it will be
for you.—
Letter 142, 1900
Clogs the Machinery
157. My brother, you have much to learn. You indulge your
appetite by eating more food than your system can convert into good
blood. It is sin to be intemperate in the quantity of food eaten, even
if the quality is unobjectionable. Many feel that if they do not eat
meat and the grosser articles of 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.
[103]
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 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