For A Stressed-Out Stomach
Cabbages at roadside stand near Greenfield, MA, Courtesy of the New York Public Library
Today we continue the series on good nutrition and the work of Dr. Alvenia M. Fulton. This particular story highlights culinary practices that can help to monitor one’s stress-levels by limiting the consumption of high-fat content food products and other junk food.
Dr. Alvenia M. Fulton can best be described as an expert on stomach problems. In the early 1950s, she had migrated to Chicago from Tennessee. Soon after she arrived in the Windy City, she began to suffer from a bleeding stomach ulcer for weeks. She pointed to growing up on a toxic southern diet and overeating as the root of the problem. She had been like the sick woman in the Gospel of Mark who had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet never got better but grew worse. Through the stomach illness Fulton learned about naturopathy and the suffering stopped. Some 20 years later she said that one's diet, the pressure of city life, and “pent-up feelings” are the causes of a stressed-out stomach. Her remedy called for eating foods and drinking juices high in vitamin C which cleanses the stomach and vitamin D which protects the body from nerve stress and strain. Moreover, avoid fried foods. Adding brewer’s yeast to soups, salads, and drinking it in milk helps neutralize the stomach acids that cause the burning sensation in one stomach lining and esophagus. Fresh carrot, apple and cabbage juice also relieves an upset stomach. A good pre-bedtime remedy is a glass of warm milk or consommé with a protein powder.
