What to eat and when

by Susanna Cocroft

Results obtained, in building up about twenty thousand thin women, show that the free drinking of liquid at meals has a tendency to increase flesh. Probably one reason for this is the cleanliness and greater freedom it gives to the absorbing and secreting cells of the mucous lining of the digestive tract, the stronger peristalsis it occasions, and the consequent better digestion.

When one wishes to reduce in flesh, water drinking at meals is restricted.

If the contents of the stomach have become too concentrated or solid, the water will render it more liquid, hence will aid the admixture with the gastric juices and will enable it more readily to pass the pyloric orifice.

Drinking at meals, therefore, has many more arguments in its favor than against it.

All who have a tendency to the deposit of uric acid in the tissues, as in gout, should drink freely of water to lessen the deposit of salts from the blood which must maintain its proportion of fluid.

More water should be drunk if the meal consists largely of protein. The nitrogen it contains is eliminated in a short time by the kidneys, the amount of urine is increased, and more water must be drunk to make up the loss.

In sickness, as in fever, the increased respiration causes a corresponding loss of water from the skin and the lungs. If the bowels are active as in diarrhea, much water is lost in this way. The increase in the heat of the body also tends to dry all the secretions, hence water must be taken to keep them in proper fluidity.

The patient is often too ill to ask for water or will forget to ask for it. Constipation may result from this cause. It must be a part of the nurse’s duty to see that a sufficient amount is taken. An excess of cold water, if hastily taken, may cause cramps. If slowly sipped it will do no harm.

Water may be given in fever in the form of lemonade; a small pinch of soda will make it effervescent and more refreshing.

There is no tonic like water, exercise, and fresh air. The safe method is not to allow the habit of drinking water with regularity to be broken, unless for some necessary purpose, and then the habit should be reinstated as soon as possible.