Allowing any of the cast-off material of the stomach and intestines to remain in the lower bowel will most positively cause a muddy and pimpled skin. The reason is plain. This material is dead stuff meant to be cast off out of the body EVERY day. If it remains in the body it putrefies, forms gases and acids, which are REabsorbed into your system, taken up by the blood, which later on shows it in your face. Just think of it! Would you like to go around with all the signs of putrid matter being kept in your body? Of course not; yet you will outwardly show these signs if you do not keep your lower bowels always cleaned.
What is the best way to keep the bowels clean?
Regularity in your habits of toilet is, first of all, the most important factor. Drinking plenty of water—you see I am at it again—in the morning, is next in importance. Your breakfast food can be so arranged that the bowels will empty themselves every morning if the habit and water drinking have been carefully looked after. Fruit, stewed or ripe, should be taken every morning. Little or no meat is needed nor advisable for you in the morning. Cereals—real cereals, not the sawdust and roasted bread crust stuff—are good for the morning meal. Plain, old-fashioned oatmeal comes first, then hominy or similar cereals.
The idea that buckwheat or other breakfast cakes cause pimples is all nonsense. The same is true about syrups, butter or sugar. If you have flushed your stomach and intestines with water and fruit, you may eat all the cakes and sugar you wish. Candy does not affect your complexion, neither do cakes, pie, nor any sweets which ARE PURE AND EATEN AT THE PROPER TIME.
All our grandmothers’ scare and advice about eating candy and other sweets is due to the fact that they DO harm in this way. Candy and other sweets are too often eaten between meals or early in the morning and thus cause a lack of appetite. With this loss of appetite, the body cannot get its nourishing and bowel-cleansing food. It is the loss of this nourishing food and the natural result of having nothing in the intestines which will wash these food tracts out, that does all the harm. It is living unnaturally to be in such a condition, and any unnatural way of living will bring about unhealth, and this will be shown by a poor and nasty-looking complexion, a hot skin and flabby flesh.
Young women and girls often need sugar in their system and at certain times will crave it. Other girls will crave something sour—pickles, for instance. EAT PICKLES AND CANDY IF YOU CRAVE THEM. But do not forget that first you must have had a breakfast free from these substances, have thoroughly emptied your bowels and had a good noon meal. After these good meals you may eat candy, pickles, ice cream, any old thing—IF THE MATERIALS ARE PURE. This is a very important matter. Eat nothing that has been exposed to the dust of the streets or any filthy place. We shall have something to say about “dope” drops and candies in which are brandies, cocaine and other drugs.
The girl who goes out at noon and buys for her luncheon éclaires, doughnuts, cream puffs and other pastry, and makes a meal of this stuff, is positively going to have a pasty complexion, be constantly constipated and unable to do her full amount of work—school, house or office. If she has taken some good soup and eaten a little nourishing food, THEN the pastry will not harm her; perhaps do her good.
I have said nothing about eggs or fish. I think most of you are glad of it and know the reason. I have had thousands of girls and young women under my charge and but few of them could eat either eggs or fish; and to many, milk was positively repulsive. At certain times these kinds of foods are nauseating to many girls and young women. Now and then a young woman will take an egg or a few bites of fish, but all through the active portion of her life she abhors a diet of such eatables. It is a case of—
Jack Spratt could eat no pie,
His wife could eat no fish;
So betwixt them both
Each had a separate dish.