Few seem to realize that each type of food requires specific and different digestive enzymes in the mouth, stomach, and intestine. Carbohydrates, fats, proteins--each requires differing acid or alkaline environments in order to be digested. Proteins require an acid environment. Starch digestion requires an alkaline environment. When foods in complex combinations are presented to the stomach all together, like a meal with meat, potatoes, gravy, vegetables, bread, butter, a glass of milk, plus a starchy sweet desert, followed by coffee or tea, the stomach, pancreas, liver and small intestine are overwhelmed, resulting in the fermentation of the sugars and starches, and the putrefaction of the proteins, and poor digestion of the whole. It is little wonder that most people feel so tired after a large meal and need several cups of strong coffee to be able to even get up from the table. They have just presented their digestive tract with an immensely difficult and for some an impossible task.
For the most efficient digestion, the body should be presented with one simple food at a time, the one bowl concept, easily achieved by adherence to the old saying, "one food at a meal is the ideal." An example of this approach would be eating fruits for breakfast, a plain cereal grain for lunch, and vegetables for supper. If you can't eat quite that simply, then proper food combining rules should be followed to minimize digestive difficulty, maximize the adsorption of nutrients from your food, and reduce or eliminate the formation of toxemia, and of course foul gas.
In general, fruit should be eaten alone unless you happen to be hypoglycemic or diabetic in which case fruit should be eaten with small quantities of a vegetable protein such as nuts, or yogurt and/or cheese if able to digest dairy. Starches should be eaten with vegetables, which means that a well combined meal would include a grain such as rice, millet, buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, corn, wheat, rye, oats, spelt, potatoes, or starchy winter squash combined with raw or cooked vegetables. Protein foods such as meat, eggs, beans, lentils, tofu, split peas, should be combined with vegetables, raw or cooked. But protein should never be combined with starches. The most popular North American snacks and meals always have a starch/protein combination, for example: meat and potatoes, hamburger in a bun, hot dog with bun, burrito with meat or cheese, meat sandwiches, etc. It is little wonder that intestinal gas is accepted as normal, and that over time these hard to digest combinations eventually cause health problems that demand attention.
Another sure fire way to ruin any food, including the very best available is to eat in the presence of negative emotions generated by yourself or others. Negative emotions include fear, anger, frustration, envy, resentment, etc. The digestive tract is immediately responsive to stress and or negative thoughts. It becomes paralyzed in negative emotional states; any foods eaten are poorly digested, causing toxemia.
It is natural for a person who has lost a loved one or suffered a great loss of any kind to lose their appetite for a period of time. This reaction is pro-survival, because while grieving, the body is griped by powerful negative emotions. There are people who, under stress or when experiencing a loss, eat ravenously in an attempt to comfort themselves. If this goes on for long the person can expect to create a serious illness of some kind.
Individual sensitivity to this type of overeating is dependent upon genetics and personality and who is generating the negative emotions. Self generated negative emotions are very difficult to avoid. If you are unable to change your own emotional tone or that of others around you, then it is important to eat very lightly, eat only easily digested foods such as raw fruits and vegetables, raw juices, steamed vegetables, and small servings of whole grains, nuts and seeds.
Diets To Heal The Critically Ill
A critically ill person is someone who could expire at any moment; therapeutic interventions are racing against death. Can the body repair itself enough before some essential function ceases altogether? If there already exists too much damage to vital organs the person will die. If there remains sufficient organ function to support life, enough vital force to power those functions, and a will to live, the body may heal itself if helped by the correct therapeutic approach. But the therapy does not do the healing; the body does that by itself--if it can. This reality is also true of allopathic medicine.
I believe fasting is the therapy that almost invariably gives a critically ill person their very best chance of recovery. If a patient dies while fasting they almost certainly would have died anyway, and if death comes while fasting, it will be more comfortable, with less pain, and with more mental clarity.
Critically ill people may have, among other things, any of the following diagnoses: advanced cancer, advanced aids, heart failure, very high blood pressure, kidney failure, advanced liver disease, advanced emphysema, pneumonia or other catastrophic infections, especially those that seem unresponsive to antibiotics, strokes, emboli, sclerotic vessels as found in arteriosclerosis, severe nerve degeneration interfering with nerve transmission to vital organs.