Devotional, December 26
December 26, 2021 @ 7:30 am - 8:00 am AST
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HEALTHFUL LIVING
Chapter 18 – Diet
#405. Overeating, even of the simplest food, benumbs the sensitive nerves of the brain, and weakens its vitality. Overeating has a worse effect upon the system than overworking; the energies of the soul are more effectually prostrated by intemperate eating than by intemperate working. The digestive organs should never be burdened with the quantity or quality of food which it will tax the system to appropriate. All that is taken into the stomach, above what the system can use to convert into good blood, clogs the machinery; for it cannot be made into either flesh or blood, and its presence burdens the liver, and produces a morbid condition of the system.—Testimonies for the Church 2:412. {HL 88.4}
#406. Overeating is intemperance just as surely as is liquor drinking.—Unpublished Testimonies, August 30, 1896. {HL 89.1}
#407. And what influence does overeating have upon the stomach?—It becomes debilitated, the digestive organs are weakened, and disease, with all its train of evils, is brought on as the result. If persons were diseased before, they thus increase the difficulties upon them, and lessen their vitality every day they live. They call their vital powers into unnecessary action to take care of the food that they place in their stomachs. What a terrible condition is this to be in!—Testimonies for the Church 2:364. {HL 89.2}
#408. Eating merely to please the appetite is a transgression of nature’s laws; often this intemperance is felt at once in the form of indigestion, headache, and colic. A load has been placed upon the stomach that it cannot care for, and a feeling of oppression comes. The head is confused, the stomach is in rebellion. But these results do not always follow overeating. In some cases the stomach is paralyzed. No sensation of pain is felt, but the digestive organs lose their vital force. The foundation of the human machinery is gradually undermined, and life is rendered very unpleasant.—Unpublished Testimonies, August 30, 1896. {HL 89.3}
#409. Taken with meals, water diminishes the flow of the salivary glands; and the colder the water the greater the injury to the stomach. Ice water or iced lemonade, drunk with meals, will arrest digestion until the system has imparted sufficient warmth to the stomach to enable it to take up its work again.—The Review and Herald, July 29, 1884. {HL 89.4}