HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 March 1942, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

NO MORE GASTRIC ULCERS. USE OF WHOLEMEAL BREAD. (By the Health Department.) A community entirely free from gastric ulcers is something we can scarcely hope for. The next best thing is to free as much of the community as possible from liability to gastric ulcer. One of the answers to this problem is wholemeal bread. The development of the wholemeal bread habit in our younger will, one authority estimates, save them from at least halt the gastric ulcers which help to make life miserable for this generation. Wholemeal bread contains, among others things, Vitamin B-l. Ordinarily the average New Zealander doesn’t get enough of it. Every little movement we make means a certain number ol body cells wrecked. Vitamin B-l is essential to their replacement. It is continually draining away from us, and it has continually to be renewed. Without enough of it, all cells have their efficiency seriously impaired. If it is in too short supply over a period, stomach troubles are liable to occur. Recently a group of medical men deliberately set themselves out to see what actually did happen when they went short of Vitamin B-l. Their intake was about half the required quantity, just enough to keep them from getting symptoms. In a few days they began to feel tired, lose their appetites, become constipated, and suffer from other consequences that were of a definite medical interest. The experiment confirmed the belief that the absence of this small, but important, constituent of unrefined foods v/ill keep a person below par, and in time will get him all nice and ready for a real illness. Wholemeal bread is not a fad. Besides this vitamin, it contains three times more iron than ordinary white bread, and there are also in it substances which facilitate the preparation of the stomach ready for its absorption. Iron is needed to make red] blood, and red blood prevents anaemia.,