The Nome Nugget

THE NOME DAILY NUGGET
Let Our Motto Be
GOOD HEALTH
BY DR. LLOYD ARNOLD
Professor of Bacteriology and Preventive Medicine, University of Illinois, College of Medicine.

DIET IN RELATION TO COLDS

The more we study diet and nutrition, the more we are convinced that many health problems can best be corrected by diet. More and more we are coming to believe that we are what we eat as a result.

Our whole body is enclosed in an epithelial tissue membrane. At places it is dried and thickened to protect us against friction, as the skin. At other places it is a thin moistened layer as in the nose, mouth and throat. Many people do not think of it this way, but the lining membrane of the air tract the wind passages and the lung cells are really body surface coverings.

The lining of the digestive tract is likewise another body surface covering. Considered as such, the contents of the digestive tract are outside of the body. The body surface selects from the food that we send to the digestive tract by way of the mouth, the substances it needs.

Obviously, if we do not give it the right materials to work upon, the body cannot have its maximum efficiency. A body that is not given the right food can never be as efficient or healthy as the body that has the right "stoking."

In many experiments, which we have been conducting in our medical research laboratories, we have found that one of the very important functions of this body surface covering, whether it is the outside skin or the lining of the breathing tract or the digestive tract, is to prevent the invasion of bacteria. Healthy skin has a marvelous power for disinfecting itself. When germs land on healthy body surfaces, they are promptly and efficiently destroyed.

You can, for instance, place millions of germs on the skin of your hand or any other part of your outside body surface, except under your finger nails, and the line where the outside skin and the lining membrane meet at your mouth, your nostrils and around your eyes, and if the skin is clean the germs will disappear of themselves within a few minutes.

You can likewise breathe in many germs and swallow many germs without being affected in any way, providing the lining of the breathing tract and the lining of the digestive tract are in good healthy condition. But if the mucous lining is inflamed or "sick" in any way, then the affected part loses its self-disinfecting power, and bacteria gain an easy entrance to the body.

Man is an omnivorous animal: that is he is a meat and vegetable eater. The anatomy and the physiology of his stomach and intestinal tract show that he has developed through untold generations upon a mixed diet of meat and vegetables. A good big beefsteak makes us feel good. We secrete more gastric juice after eating a meat meal.

The American public has been made vitamin-conscious as a result of the advertisements appearing in the press. Vitamins are grouped into two big classes, those promoting normal growth and those aiding us in maintaining health after adult age has been reached. We cannot always separate these two classes of vitamins from a public health standpoint. These substances have been eaten along with energy producing and protein replacement foods for so many centuries that man has become so accustomed to these accessory materials he cannot do without them. They are the lubricating agents of our complex inter-acting body machinery.

We have found in tests which we have made in our research laboratories that an unbalanced diet, that is, one in which necessary vitamins are absent, causes these lining membranes of the breathing and digestive tracts to lose their power of destroying bacteria. Then germs can invade us because our defenses have lost their ability to defend.

In tests which we have been making in the last three years, we have learned that most of the people who suffer from frequent head colds eat too much starchy food. They do not get enough of the health-necessary vitamins. They should cut down radically on the amount of bread, pastry, and sweets they consume and eat generously of cooked vegetables and of salads and green vegetables, and of all fruits in season. Soups of peas, beans, asparagus and celery are especially recommended.

Two full glasses of orange juice a day are good medicine for chronic cold sufferers. The cheaper tomato juice, however, is just as healthful. And the inexpensive cabbage is mighty good food.

Western Newspaper Union.