ASI 2019: Business Unusual

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Unusual Living

Lyndi Schwartz

Food As Medicine

So I went to medical school at Long Island University, and when I went to Long Island University Medical School, they taught us lots of stuff.

I have never seen a case of beriberi, but I have seen cases of heart disease and congestive heart failure and high blood pressure out of control and diabetes and gout and those kinds of things.

But this is interesting because if you look at the 10 leading causes of death, you look at heart disease and cancer and diabetes and stroke and so forth, even kidney disease, the majority of these conditions are related to dietary choices and are fully preventable.

So, and then if you look at risk factors for chronic diseases, what we see here is that we underestimate of our food choices.

And so it is not tobacco that's causing our problem or high blood pressure, it is our food choices, suboptimal food choices.

And actually when you look at chronic disease, probably 80% of the chronic diseases that we have are completely preventable.

There was just a publication recently about the global burden of health of chronic diseases worldwide and that global burden of disease, a line from that said that what we are not eating is killing us And specifically what the article was talking about is whole grains, and we're going to talk about whole grains, nuts and fruit is killing us because we're not eating it.

The other thing that was important about that article, it's published every year in the Lancet.

In other words, what countries do you live longest in?

The United States of America was ranked number 43 behind Rwanda and Nigeria.

They're doing better than the United States is.

So when you look at that, those, these chronic diseases, these things are fully preventable.

And so what we understand is Seventh-day Adventist given the health message is that the Lord has given us our bodies to be the temple of the Holy Spirit.

So when we talk about lifestyle and these kinds of things today, Many people are talking about nutrition and health and so forth, but Seventh-day Adventists appreciate the uniqueness really is for the use of the Holy Spirit.

Too often as physicians, we are really good at giving medications to people.

And the disease continues to go, but instead of turning off the faucet, we keep giving medications.

What's interesting is some people want to be able to get their medication and eat their cake, too.

1 of the most frustrating things as a physician that I have to encounter is a patient who says I want to eat my cheesecake I don't give have diabetes I want to eat my cheesecake and and just give me the pills and I'll be fine.

I want to eat my salt Can't you give me pills for my high blood pressure?

So I believe that what we need to do is to stop mopping the floor and turn off the faucet.

So what we're gonna cover today in in kind of a rapid fashion is consensus views on nutrition, what Americans actually eat.

We're gonna do a deep dive into cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, cancer, and obesity, and I can tell you right now that we're not going to be able to cover all of this.

But what we're going to look at is what science says about this.

The fact of the matter is Ellen White made statements years ago when she was given this message, And now science has come and backed her up.

And I wish that at Seventh-day Adventist we were more proactive.

As we talk about these nutritional studies, There's lots of confusion in the literature.

Does anybody in this room, besides my husband, know what city this is?

And The reason I have Bangkok up here is because last year in December, my husband and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary, went to Thailand, and I love Bangkok.

But the point really I want to illustrate is this.

If you look at nutritional studies, It's like looking at a skyline.

Some of the buildings are tall, some of them are shorter, and what you want to look at is how these studies contribute to the overall landscape.

How many people think coconut oil is the best thing since sliced bread?

And so it used to be that coconut oil, you don't eat that, it's, you know, saturated and whatnot.

And then all of a sudden, coconut oil was the bomb.

And now we're beginning to realize maybe coconut oil is not the bomb.

So as we look at nutritional studies, we are looking at the overall weight of the evidence.

We're gonna frame the discussion in a way that I believe is accessible to almost all of us.

We're gonna look at these food groups in colors.

There are the red box foods, the yellow box foods, and the green box foods.

So the red box foods, there is broad consensus in the literature that these foods promote harm.

And the green box foods, there is broad consensus in the literature that these foods are very health-promoting foods, and both of these 2 boxes, you will find practically no studies, in fact, I will say no studies that refute the fact that these foods are either health promoting or they cause harm.

Where the debate sometimes often is, is what I'm calling yellow box foods, poultry, eggs, dairy.

And the reason these are yellow box is because when you compare them to the red box foods, they seem really great.

But are they really the best thing that we should be eating?

So that's how we're going to frame the discussion this morning.

Now, what we're going to talk about is, first of all, this, the red box foods, processed meat.

Processed meat is any meat that has been cured, smoked, fermented, or preservatives that added.

Chicken nuggets, cold cuts, hot dogs, bacon, salami, all these processed foods are highly dangerous foods.

Red meat, and that 1 is fairly self-explanatory.

Red meat, you know, do you see these signs that pork is the other white meat?

The definition of red meat is any mammalian muscle meat is red meat.

So beef, pork, lamb, goat, veal, venison, mutton, it's all the same.

What we want to focus a little bit on is refined grains.

There are a few seats, I believe, scattered around if people want to get some seats.

1 of my pet peeves as a physician is related to carbohydrate.

How many of you have heard that carbohydrates are bad for you?

Everyone says carbohydrates are bad for you.

Well, the fact of the matter is, we're going to look at these refined grains.

These are whole grains where the nutrients and the fiber have been stripped from these things.

When we say whole grain, we mean that all these 3 parts are still intact in the stuff we're eating.

A refined grain is a grain that has most of the nutrients stripped from it.

What we have here is a very nutritionally depleted food.

And that's when carbohydrates get a bad name.

So look at quinoa and the buckwheat, etc.

These are pseudo grains because botanically they are seeds, but functionally they are grains.

So they're fabulous for us to eat for health.

But if you look at this here, this is 80% the refined grains, they lose 80% of the fiber and the nutrients.

And by the way, I'm going to give you some teaching points.

I want you to write them down as we go along and when you leave here you should have about 10 points that you're gonna take home.

Daniel Treiyer

How to Motivate Health

Father in heaven, thank you so much for this day and for the freedom and opportunity to come together to discuss topics of mutual interest and to be able to figure out how to better motivate ourselves and others when it comes to health.

As we were reminded yesterday by Elder Wilson, there is a pressing need for total member involvement when it comes to engagement in ministries of redemption and the reduction of suffering that we rob you of if our health is not optimized.

So please be with us as we review a lot of material on how to motivate ourselves and others towards a better optimization of health with the goal of then being involved in ministries to reduce suffering and redeem humanity all for your glory and your name amen so we have an aim problem when it comes to health in our country.

We have an aim problem in our states, in our counties, in our communities, even in our churches and homes.

People aren't aiming high enough when it comes to health.

People are still losing their lives and the lives of their loved ones to heart disease and cancer and other preventable diseases at times.

And is little conscious planning being done by several people to aim towards a higher health goal.

And that is what I'd like to discuss with you today, how we can aim higher and the best ways that psychology and motivation and human personality can help us achieve those aims.

In chapter 36 of Mind, Character, and Personality, volume 1, aptly called Principles of Motivation, Ellen White states, success in any line demands a definite aim.

He who would achieve true success in life must keep steadily in view the aim worthy of his endeavor." And later in that same page another quote, an aimless life is a living death.

The mind should dwell upon themes relating to our eternal interests.

This will be conducive to health of body and mind.

Now I got interested in this topic about 2 years ago.

I'm an internal medicine physician working as a hospitalist in northwest Georgia for those of you that don't know me.

And I realized that sometimes how I said things to patients wasn't the most effective.

And I realized my ignorance in how to best accomplish effective motivating.

And that's what led me to go into an in-depth discussion and study of the psychology of motivation and human personality and led me to read also a lot in the spirit of prophecy on the need to develop aims.

Now 1 of my psychology professors as an undergraduate, because I did psychology along with pre-medical requirements before going into medical school, once told me that if something worthwhile grips you, you ignore it at your peril.

So here I am, as this subject has gripped me, and I wanted to share it with you.

1 of the warnings we have also in the Bible has to do with our Laodicean condition.

And there's a stern warning from Christ in Matthew 25, 29 that for to everyone who has, more will be given and he will have abundance.

But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away." So that's a warning that we need to be aiming higher when it comes to health.

Another thing to keep in mind is You don't get what you don't aim for, whereas you might get what you aim for, even if your aim isn't accurate at first, as long as you have a clear aim to pursue and make progress towards it is better than having no aim.

Because the definition of having no aim or continuously missing the mark is sin, right?

But on the other hand, Christ also has good news for us.

He came to give us life and life more abundantly.

Here's another quote I wanted to share from Ellen White.

God is well pleased if those striving for eternal life aim high.

There will be strong temptations to indulge the natural traits of character by becoming worldly wise, scheming, and selfishly ambitious.

But every temptation resisted is a priceless victory gained in subduing self.

It bends the powers to the service of Jesus and increases faith, hope, patience, and forbearance.

Let us aim in the strength of Jesus for the crown heavy with stars.

They that be wise shall shine as the firmament and They that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.

So what is going to be our health aim for the next couple of months here?

I propose that every aim should have a why, a how, and a what.

And like I mentioned last night, when it comes to health, many of us have already heard quite a bit about the why and the what, the what being our health message and wholeness, but not much time seems to be devoted to an in-depth discussion of the how and that's what I want to get into today.

But first let's get into the what a little more, okay?

So we know the SDA health message teaches that pure water, fresh air, safe prudent sunlight, exercise, avoidance of toxins and mind-altering drugs, and a whole plant-based diet with simple but varied foods that we make appetizing with spices is good for us.

Stress reduction is very important, especially in this day and age of increasing burnout and taking environmental precautions from chemicals, pollutants, and fumes also good to keep in mind.

A few years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored a study in the United States, published in JAMA in 2013, that wanted to identify the 17 leading risk factors in the U.S.

So what we're eating has a lot to do with our morbidity and mortality in our nation.

Number 2 is tobacco smoking, 3, high blood pressure, 4, a high BMI, and 5, physical inactivity and low physical activity.

So It's safe to say that in the United States and other developed nations, processed food and tobacco are still killing us slowly.

And there's a lot of corporate interests that want our money but not our health.

As you can see, there's proposals, now this is a joke, but there are proposals from companies on how to get people to eat their food pyramid that's all about their bottom line and profit and not your health.

So we have to be sometimes disagreeable to that as we'll get into.

For us Adventists, you know, we talk a lot about not eating meat and eating healthful foods, but it's still hard for us to get away from processed foods.

We know we live in an industrialized nation and it's tough to not eat anything on the left hand side all the time and only eat things on the right hand side.

But The ideal that we should be in pursuit of and aiming for is things on the right hand side.

Whole plant-based foods, little processing, little nutrients extracted from them from what we see on the left.

And that has led some lifestyle doctors to conclude that processed food is the new tobacco.

Because there's a lot of commercial impetus to promote, you know, foods on the left and not as much on the right because the money is not quite as easy to come by with foods on the right for them.

Every couple of years the CDC publishes data on the leading killers in the US and the last 1 I saw was from 2016 data and number 1 is still heart disease so that is the most likely reason you or a family member will lose their life.

Number 2 is cancer which is gaining on heart disease and they thought that within the next 10 years cancer would become number 1 but more recent data I saw is showing that heart disease ticked upwards again recently, so it's still number 1 and expected to continue in that position for the next several years.

Number 3, which was a change from the 2010 data, is accidents.

And probably the big thing that contributed to that is, you know, your cell phones.

Everybody's car insurance rates are going up, you know.

And then chronic lower respiratory diseases like emphysema, chronic bronchitis, or COPD used to be number 3 but is now number 4.

Accidents used to be number 6 and went up to number 3 so that's a big change I think.

So heart disease as we all know is caused by a common process called atherosclerosis where you get buildup of plaque and cholesterol in your arteries that impairs the need of nutrients and blood flow to your organs and depending on where in the body it occurs if it's in your brain we call it ischemia or cerebral infarction or stroke if it's in your heart myocardial infarction or heart attack and your kidney you get ischemia too and your legs you can get what's called a symptom called claudication where when you walk you get intense pain and have to take breaks.

All the same process And the number 1 reason you or a loved 1 will die, so very important to keep your arteries healthy by eating more whole plant-based foods and exercising.

And following, you know, the elements of our SDA health plan.

And like I mentioned, number 3 nowadays is accidents.

So please don't do this, you know, young people trying to get Instagram famous, or this kind of stuff, or this, you know.

Now is distracted driving and accidents that could have been prevented.

I mean, You know, there's exercise programs and things that can be done to reduce the risk, but sometimes gravity will still take you down and just be the most cautious you can, you know, if you're frail and at risk for falling.

All right, so we talked a little bit about the what, now let's talk a little bit about the why before we get into the how.

So, Anytime we have things of value, we need to form hierarchies because with hierarchies come an element of organization and a structure within which you can carry that value better.

And it's true that across our population, some people are better at things than others.

And so we need a system where we get the most talented people at the top that can give impetus or propel the values forward.

And I propose that for Seventh-day Adventists, the number 1 value that we should strive for is the glorification of God.

Below that, ministries to redeem and reduce suffering, which ASI is a great event to come to, to learn more about those and get involved in those.

But if our health is not optimized, we are robbing God of being involved in these ministries that bring glory to Him.

So this is where I'm passionate about to spend more time discussing how to optimize, because there's a lot to unpack there.

Here's another quote that I love from Evan White from our High Calling devotional, page 64.

I have seen that those who live for a purpose seeking to benefit and bless their fellow men and to honor and glorify Their Redeemer there's the glory of God as the number 1 goal are the truly happy ones on the earth While the man who is restless discontented and seeking this and testing that hoping to find happiness is always complaining of disappointment.

He is always in want, never satisfied, because he lives for himself alone.

Let it be your aim to do good or reduce suffering, to act your part in life faithfully.

Find time to comfort some other heart, to bless with a kind cheering word someone who is battling with temptation and maybe affliction.

And thus blessing another with cheering, hopeful words, pointing him to the burden bearer, you may unexpectedly find peace, happiness, and consolation yourself.

If you go back to that pyramid of values that I had with the hierarchy of glory to God, reduction of suffering, and ministries of redemption, and optimizing health, if you compare and contrast that to the values of our secular world, what would you think would be at the top?

Probably the pursuit of happiness, right?

It's embedded in our declaration of independence.

And below that, most people probably want money, wealth, fame, beauty, and things of a transient nature.

But what's the problem if your ultimate pursuit is happiness?

It's like setting across the Pacific on a shallow boat.

Soon as you hit some storms, you'll know that you need something deeper to sustain you.

Melinda Skau

Painful Past, Eternal Opportunities

Here's 2 Corinthians 9.8, and God is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you'll abound in every good work.

I do not think that God meant us to have hopeless lives because we have some instant happen to us in childhood that's negative.

God says we've been established, anointed, and sealed.

We've not been given, oh it's coming in front of the screen here, let's get that, okay, okay.

We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind.

We are born of God and the evil 1 cannot touch us.

We are seated with Christ in the heavenly realm.

And 1 of my favorite verses, and we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose, Romans 8 28.

All things, all things, you mean even that thing in my past?

The worse it is, the better the opportunity for God to show his glory through it.

So ACEs first began to be discussed around 1998 when Vincent Folletti, a physician from Kaiser Permanente, did a complex weight management program.

Women were losing up to 300 pounds in a year on his program.

Some of the clients that were the most successful at weight loss suddenly began to gain the weight back faster than physiologically possible.

And he would hear the same kind of stories over and over again.

Some event happened in their present that reminded them of some tragedy from their childhood and they would immediately gain all that weight back.

Kind of a protection, a layer of fat around them.

Or maybe they'd take up smoking and smoke 4 packs a day and make a cloud of smoke to keep people away.

So Vincent Fletty thought this was very interesting.

So he and Bob Onda from the CDC interviewed over 17, 300 Kaiser patients in confidential surveys and interviews.

And they had the advantage of being able to look at the Kaiser charts up to 20 years of health records and see what kind of adult illnesses did people have who had high trauma scores in childhood.

So the quiz that they gave was a 10 point quiz and you can go on the internet to aces.com or .org and download the 10-point quiz of adverse childhood experiences.

Nadine Burke-Harris, which is a 16-minute TED Talk.

If you Google TED Talk Aces, it'll probably come up as the most frequently viewed talk that explains aces, Dr.

And the 10 things on the quiz were 3 kinds of abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual.

2 kinds of neglect, physical or emotional, did you not have enough clothing or food as a child or were you totally unloved?

Did you have a parent with mental illness?

Did you have a relative who was incarcerated in prison and jail?

Did 1 of your parents have substance abuse, alcohol or narcotics or some methamphetamine or some kind of substance that kept them from being available to effectively parent you?

And were your parents separated or divorced while you were a child?

So all this is questions of what happened to you under age 18.

The study population was a Kaiser middle class population.

70% of the people studied had at least some or all of college.

So it wasn't the ghetto neighborhood where I grew up.

But in that population, 64% of the people had at least 1 adverse childhood experience.

28% of the people surveyed reported physical abuse and 21% reported sexual abuse.

The other thing they noticed was the ACEs cluster.

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