HEALING AID

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 347, 15 February 1946, Page 18

HEALING AID

(Written for "The Listener" by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist to the

Health Department)

HE other day, a friend whom I met in the street, a former hospital sister, described to me her. difficulties in feeding her husband, suffering as he was from a severe gastric ulcer which refuses to heal. The condition in this case is attended by frequent and profuse bleeding and copious vomiting. It was a question of how to build him up before operation. The doctor had prescribed an appropriate dietary, but the difficulty was to get the patient to retain it. "How is he getting on with his orange juice?" I asked. "He cannot take it because it makes him feel worse," was the reply. "T imagine that in his case it should be given in a diluted form, to be sipped at intervals during the day," I explained, "for the acidity of the neat orange juice stimulates not only the flow of saliva, but also the flow of gastric juice, which is what you want to avoid in this case. You need to give plenty of vitamin in order to promote healing of the ulcer, but to give vitamin C in a bland nonstimulating form is not easy, because many of our best sources of vitamin C are fruits." There is no doubt about the necessity for plenty of vitamin C to promote the | healing of wounds, ulcers, or fractures. It comes into the picture in accelerating the recovery of thé mouth after removal of the teeth, or in speeding up the recovery of the patient after operation or after pneumonia, tuberculosis, or other serious illness. The’ underlying reason is that vitamin C is necessary for those cells that knit our injured tissues together in the healing process. Neither bone nor soft structure can heal quickly unless there are considerable amounts of vitamin C present. The problem with the patient with gastric ulcer-or with the patient with an ulcerated mouth — is to give the vitamin C in a suitable form. This can be done either by diluting the orange juice, or the tomato juice, or by taking the edge off their acidity by the addition of precipitated calcium carbonate, for example, used in the proportion of one-quarter of a teaspoon for every eight ounces of tomato juice; or the edge can be taken off by mixing in some cream or top milk. Other ways of giving vitamin C are by using diluted rose-hip syrup, diluted in this instance because the sugar solution stimulates the flow of gastric juice, or using rose-hip jelly, or making an extract of green vegetables by the following recipe; then flavouring the extract with sieved carrots, or tomato. Those vegetables which be-. long to the cabbage family may not always be suitable for the gastric ulcer patient. They arg included here merely to complete the recipe for vegetable liquor. ; : To Make Vegetable Liquor Containing Vitamin C: Vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, swedes, turnip, tops, spinach, silver beet. Prepare and cut up into ribbons or small dice just before cooking, and use in the

proportion of two cups of vegetable to one cup of water in a small aluminium or enamel pot. Put the vegetable into boiling water, bring quickly back to the boil, then cook gently for 10 to 20 minutes, with the lid on. Squeeze out as much of the juice from the vegetable das you can. Regard as being equal to one-tMird the value of orange juice. The addition of parsley increases its vitamin C content.