Dr Hay also listed incompatible food combinations and fibre-deficient refined carbohydrates as sources of acid formation. Both these sources directly contribute to constipation. Striking proof that they do so was provided in a paper entitled ‘Amylaceous Dyspepsia’ (starch-caused indigestion), published in The Liverpool Medico-Chirurgical Journal in 1931. Its author was Dr Lionel J. Picton, author-in-chief of the famous Cheshire Medical Testament, published in 1938, in which 31 family doctors declared that the prevention of sickness depends on right feeding.
In this paper Dr Picton drew attention to a well-known laboratory experiment on dogs by the famous Russian scientist, Pavlov. From this experiment, according to Dr Picton, Pavlov deduced the following data: minced beef fed to a dog is digested in about four hours, starch by itself passed through a dog’s stomach in a much shorter time, in one-and-a-half hours or less, white bread more slowly than brown. But when meat was mixed with the starch there was invariably a delay – a protracted delay. Instead of four-and-a-half hours for meat alone, this mixture took eight or more hours to leave the stomach.
Dr Picton argued that this delay in one section of the line tended towards delay all along the line. As he pointed out: ‘The somewhat startling conclusion flows from this, that meals of mixed character such as meat and bread favour constipation, whereas meat and salad at one meal and starchy food such as bread and butter at a separate meal have no such effect.’
Dr Picton’s paper provided outstanding confirmation of the truth of the starch – protein concept, and of the close relationship of incompatible food mixtures to constipation. And his case histories of patients provided proof.
The first step in the treatment of constipation is therefore none other than that recommended by Dr Hay for all diseases, the removal of the cause – far too much acid-forming meat and carbohydrates (especially refined carbohydrates), far too little alkali-forming vegetables, salads and fruits, and incompatible food mixtures. Instructions for ‘the removal of the cause’ are given in Part Two; they are not difficult to follow and will soon prove to simplify meal-planning, and lessen cooking and the cost of cooking.
No matter how correctly the meals are combined, the fibre in the diet may be increased by taking unprocessed wheat bran daily. It should be taken at first in teaspoonful doses, in water, before meals, increasing this gradually to suit individual needs. The fibre found in oats, brown rice, linseeds or psyllium, vegetables and pulses is more soothing to the gut than wheat bran, which can cause problems for people with diverticulitis or irritable bowel syndrome. Linseeds or psyllium fibre are particularly helpful in encouraging regularlity and should always be taken with a large glass of water.
Neil S. Painter, well-known London surgeon, advises: ‘You are eating enough bran only when you can pass soft stools without straining. Once you have found this amount take it for life.’ Recent research has shown that in Westernized countries the daily stool is hard and viscous compared to that of rural Africans and Asians living on unrefined foods, and that the intestinal transit time (the time taken for food to traverse the intestines) may be as long as five days instead of 24 hours. Thus many people who think that they are not constipated may be very constipated indeed, despite having a daily stool. For this reason, and in order to speed recovery from any disease, Dr Hay suggested taking a daily two-quart, cool, plain water enema, but not without professional instruction.
Indigestion
(Standard type – upper abdominal pain, heartburn, sometimes accompanied by acid regurgitation)
For many people this condition has become an accepted evil and part of their lives. It is most frequently caused by treacherous food mixtures and it responds with astonishing rapidity to compatibly combined ones. I have rescued many people from afternoon indigestion pains resulting from lunchtime sandwiches of bread and cheese, or bread and meat. They all marvelled at the ensuing peace and tranquillity in their interiors!
Dr Cleave argues that the main cause of indigestion is the refining of carbohydrate foods which strips them of proteins so that there results an outpouring of gastric secretion but not enough protein to neutralize it.* This argument, however, is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the fact that, in spite of eating refined carbohydrate foods (white bread and sugar) during the whole of my first year of compatible eating, I nevertheless lost indigestion of 15 years’ duration during the very first week.
In her excellent book Gut Reaction (Vermilion 1998), Gudrun Jonssen gives a very clear account of the digestive process and stresses the importance of maintaining the acid – alkaline balance. She advocates Food Combining as the most effective way of improving digestion.
Dr Hay, too, was convinced that in many, perhaps most cases of indigestion, refined carbohydrates were the cause, but for a different reason. Dr Lionel Picton was likewise convinced. In the aforementioned paper he states that his evidence for this conviction was ‘mainly clinical’, having found that a reduced intake of refined starchy food relieved his patients’ symptoms. For ‘the incipient dyspeptic’ Dr Picton recommended ‘a dietary in which more greens and grilled meat should replace some of the bad foods of modern times, and moreover a diet in which starchy foods should be separated as far as possible from meat, and taken at separate meals’ – a ‘dietary’ totally in accord with Dr Hay’s precepts.
Naturopath Harry Benjamin is another who believes that combinations of starch and protein foods can cause digestive trouble. In Your Diet in Health and Disease (Thorsons, 1974) he recommends cutting out bread and potatoes with meat.
Dr Hay warned that taking antacids, the patent ‘cure’ for indigestion, is not the answer; they can compound the trouble, leading to more serious conditions. There have been medical warnings that antacids can use up certain vitamins in the body that are vital for its proper functioning. Moreover, experiments at Cornell University in the United States revealed that giving carbonate of soda and milk caused a form of kidney stones in laboratory animals. At the University of Vienna, a more recent controlled study of 300 people led by Professor Erika Jensen-Jarolim concluded that people who took medicines to combat indigestion and heartburn, particularly those bought without prescription, were more likely to develop allergies to food. Antacids are merely a crutch which deals with the symptom instead of the cause. The best treatment for indigestion is compatible eating.
Arthritis
The cause and cure of arthritis, whether rheumatoid or osteoarthritis, has baffled the medical profession. Doctors frankly admit as much; they prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers, and tell their patients they must learn to live with it. The side-effects of the painkillers, however, can be serious, even lethal, as the effects of one ‘wonder drug’ for arthritis, Opren – now withdrawn – proved all too tragically. ‘No drug to date has cured, or ever will cure, a true case of arthritis,’ wrote Dr Hay.
There are many contributing causes of arthritis, such as injuries, abuse of the body, allergic reactions, infections, stress-exhausted adrenal glands, vitamin D deficiency, etc. But the end result of most of the underlying causes produces one common denominator – deranged body chemistry. A main cause is therefore an accumulation of acid end-products of digestion resulting in a lowered reserve of the alkaline buffer salts. Dr Hay stressed that ‘the function of every organ and tissue depends on the height, breadth and depth of the alkaline reserve; and the lower this is the lower the function …’
The logical approach to treatment is therefore a nutritional one, aimed at the deranged body chemistry and not at the joints as in the conventional drug treatments and surgical treatments presently in vogue. These are merely palliatives which, once again, deal with the symptoms instead of grappling with the causes.
In a personal communication from Dr James Lambert Mount (author of