Nutrition for the advanced in years

It is necessary to divide the food of an advanced person into small portions and feed him two or three times in accordance with his digestion, his strength and weakness. At the third hour you should eat well-cooked bread with honey, and at the seventh hour, after the bath, something that softens your nature, which we will mention later. Then, after that, in the evening, you need to take good nutritious food.

In the case when the advanced person is still strong, you can slightly increase the amount of his dinner. Those who are advanced in age should abstain from all heavy foods that form black bile and mucus, and from pungent, bitter and drying agents, such as kamaha and spices, except in cases where they need to be used as medicine.

If they do what they should not have done, that is, they eat this kind of food, such as some kind of pickles, eggplants, sun-dried meat, game or fish with tough meat, watermelon and kissa, or if they commit a second mistake, that is, they eat kamakhs, small dried salted fish and bunn fish dishes, then you need to treat them by giving things that have an opposing effect, and you even need to give them juice-thinning agents, if it is known that there are excess juices in their body. After their body is cleansed, they need to be given moisturizing things. Then, from time to time, they can return to consuming a certain amount of thinning agents with food, as we will say below.

As for milk, it is useful for those people who drink it willingly and do not feel tension in the liver or abdomen after drinking it, and there is no itching or pain. Indeed, milk is nutritious and moisturizing for them. More suitable for them is the milk of goats and donkeys. One of the properties of donkey milk is that it mostly does not coagulate and passes quickly through the body, especially if salt or honey is added to it. It is necessary to ensure that there is no astringent, or pungent, or sour, or very salty plant in the pasture.

As for the greens and fruits consumed by old people, they are such as beets, celery and a small amount of leek; in particular, they should be consumed before meals, seasoned with myrrh and olive oil to help soften the nature.

If old people sometimes use garlic and if they were accustomed to it, then it is good for them. Ginger jam and most jams with hot properties are also considered a suitable medicine for them. Let them use these remedies in such quantities as to warm the body and aid in the digestion of food, but not in such quantities as to dry out the body. In this case, it is necessary that the food is moisturizing. They use these means for digestion and to warm the body, and not to dry it out.

Among the fruits suitable for the body of advanced years, which they use to soften the nature, are figs and plums in the summer, and in winter - dried figs boiled in honey water. All this should be taken before meals to soften the nature. Also useful are field loach, boiled in salt water and seasoned with myrrh and olive oil, and polypodium root when added to chicken broth or soup made from beets or cabbage. If their nature is constantly soft one day and not the next day, then there is no need for them to use a food stimulant or a laxative. If the nature is soft for one day, and constipation occurs for two days, then it is enough to give such remedies as bindweed, cabbage juice and safflower core with barley water, or turpentine tree resin, taken in a volume of one or two, or, at most, three pine nuts. Thanks to its properties, resin softens the nature and cleanses the insides without causing disturbance.

For old people, a complex medicine made from the core of safflower and dried figs, taken in ten times the amount of the former, is also useful; it is taken in the amount of one nut. An oil enema is useful for them, because in addition to emptying the body, it also softens the insides; sweet olive oil is especially useful. One should refrain from giving them “hot” enemas, as they dry out the intestines.

As for the "wet" and oil enema, it is very useful for them when they are constipated for several days. There are special medicines for them that soften their nature, which we will mention in the Pharmacopoeia. Evacuation of the body in elderly and old people, whenever possible, should be done without bloodletting. Indeed, a mild laxative is more suitable for them.