AVOID.—All rich, highly seasoned foods, candies, cheese, pies, pastry, pan cakes, or any fried foods, salmon, herring, mackeral, bluefish, eels, dried fruits, nuts and liquors of all kinds.
Gall Stones
The diet for gall stones need have no reduction in protein nor carbohydrates, since the oxidation, or the chemical action upon sugars is not interfered with. The presence of fat in the duodenum increases the flow of pancreatic juice which, in turn stimulates the flow of bile, so olive oil is often recommended in case of gall stones.
Diabetes
is a serious disturbance of nutrition. It is known and tested by the appearance of sugar in the urine. However, the conclusion should not be drawn that one has diabetes if the urine test for a day shows sugar. This may be due to an excess of carbohydrates, particularly of sugar in the diet a day or two previous and all trace of it may disappear in a day. If continued tests for some period show an excess, nutritional disturbances are indicated.
The most usual form of diabetes is diabetes mellitus. It is supposed to be due to a disturbance in the secretions from the pancreas. Experiments have shown that the general process of putting the carbohydrates in condition to be absorbed into the blood is controlled by a secretion from the pancreas.
The difficulty which confronts the dietitian is to prescribe a diet without carbohydrates which will keep up the body weight and not disturb the nutritive equilibrium. The diet must consist of protein and fat and one danger is in the tendency to acetic and other acids in the blood, which involves the nervous system. The patient has a craving for sugars and starches, but the system cannot make use of them, and the heat and energy must be supplied by fats. While, as a rule, the craving for certain foods is an indication that the system needs the elements contained in it,—this is true in the craving of the diabetes patient for carbohydrates,—yet the desire must not be gratified, because of the inability to digest them.
There is often a distaste for fat, but its use is imperative and in large quantities, because the weight and general vitality must be maintained. The effort of the physician is to get the system in condition to use carbohydrates.