HEALTH HINTS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 30, 4 February 1905, Page 10

HEALTH HINTS.

AN IDEAL DIET. This diet is given as an ideal one b> a well-known doctor: For Breakfast: Two eggs, eight: ounces of milk, two ounces of wheat bread and butter. For the Mid-day Meal: From onequarter to one-half pound of .beefsteak, eight ounces of milk, three ounces of wheat bread and butter. For the Night Meal: From one-quar-ter to one-half pound of beefsteak eight ounces of milk, two ounces of bread and butter. At Bed-time: Eight ounces of milk. Beefsteak is taken as the working standard among the meats, as it i 3 the most easily digested of all the foodstuffs. Under the heading of meat is included lamb, mutton, occasionally veal; all; kinds of fish, including the shell forms, such as oysters, lobsters, and crabs; poultry and game of all kinds. The meats to be broiled, boiled, or baked. \ ■ . The fish to be boiled or baked. The oysters to be eaten raw or stewed. The lobsters plain boiled. A little criep bacon may be taken from time to time;.also ham and corned beef, without cabbage. Eggs may be taken boiled, poached, or scrambled. The milk is best taken warm or with a little lime-water added. Wea-k coffee, without milk or sugar, or with a dash of milk, may be taken freeiy as a beverage. Coffee taken clear aids digestion, but with milk and sugar often disturbs digestion. A prolific cause of chronic indigestion is eating fomr habit, and simply because it is meal-time and others are eating. To eat when not hungry is to eat without relish, and food taken without relish is worse than wasted. Without relish, the salivary glands do not act, the gastric fluids are not freely secreted, and the best of foods will not be digested. Many perfectly harmless dishes are severely condemned, for no other reason than they were eaten perfunctorily, and without relish and due insalivataon. Hunger makes the plainest foods enjoyable. It causes vigorous secretion and outpouring of all the digestive fluids, the sources of ptyalin, pepsin, trypsin, etc., without a plentiful supply of which no foods can be perfectly digested. An expert in nervous disorders! in Paris recommends a cure for insomnia which has been tried with great success. It is simply ; to keep your eyes open when you want to go to sleep and cannot. A person whose brain is too active will sometimes close the eyes and vainly endeavour to sleep.' The very closing of the eyes seems to concentrate the mental faculties on business affairs and other distractions. The theorj' of the French physician i 3 that if the victim of incomnia will fix his eyes upon some gleam some shadow, or even on the darkness itself, he can relieve hie mind from thoughts that perplex it and divert attention from himself. Try the experiment when you are sleepless, and see how unconsciously your eyes will close and your thoughts begin to take possession of you. Struggle to keep them open and fixed upon an object, either real or imaginary, and before you are aware of it the struggle will have ended and sleep will be victorious. .