Medicine: Off the Milk Wagon

Peptic ulcer victims, who have long been condemned by most physicians to insipid Sippy diets,* should throw away their lists of forbidden foods, feel free to eat fried fish and potatoes topped with catchup, if that happens to be what they like. So said the University of Oklahoma’s Dr. Stewart G. Wolf last week. Main thing, he told the American Academy of General Practice, is not to restrict what the ulcer patient eats but to do something positive about how often he eats—and that should be every two or three hours, counting the inevitable glass of milk. Purpose of frequent eating: to give the hydrochloric acid in the digestive juices something to work on besides the lining of the stomach and duodenum.

Internist Wolf (who studied the stomach’s workings for years by looking inside a patient who had to be fed through a hole in his abdominal wall) believes that “merely restricting the diet has never been known to be of real value.” A major exception: cases of bleeding ulcers. Patients allowed to eat what they want have done at least as well as the rigidly controlled, if not better. All ulcer patients react too strongly to stress. “So if a patient falls off the milk wagon, his guilt feelings may cause the gastric glands to secrete more acid.”

* Named for Bertram Welton Sippy (1866-1924), Chicago physician who invented them.