NAD Health Summit 2012

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NAD Health Ministries

Imagine a Healthy 100

Mark Finley

A Healthy 100 Life Changing Choices

In our Creation Health series, Imagine a Healthy Hundred, We begin with C, choosing to live life at its best.

When Ronald Reagan was just a very little boy, his aunt took him to a shoe cobbler to get him a new pair of shoes.

And the shoe cobbler said to him, Ronnie, I have a question for you.

Do you want the shoes with the round toe or the square toe?

The little boy's mind went round and round.

And the shoe cobbler said, well, I'm going to cut the leather today, but you don't have to make this decision for about 3 or 4 days.

So come back in 3 or 4 days, tell me now, Ronnie, do you want the round toe or the square toe?

About 3 days later, the shoe cobbler saw young Ronnie Reagan in a marketplace and he said, have you decided?

And the young boy said, no, I haven't decided yet.

And He said, well, you come Friday and I'll have the shoes for you.

When young Reagan came on Friday to the shoe cobbler shop, the shoes were made, 1 round toe and 1 square toe.

And Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary, I learned right then and there, if you don't make your decisions, somebody else will.

All change together, all change begins with What?

The ability to choose is hardwired into our brains by a loving creator.

When God made us, he gave to us that ability or that capacity to choose.

The frontal lobe of the brain of a cat is about 3.5%.

The frontal lobe of the brain of a dog is 7%.

And the frontal lobe of the brain of a chimpanzee is 17%.

But the frontal lobe of your brain is between 33 and 38 percent.

Now there in the frontal lobe of the brain is our will, the ability to choose.

The will is the governing power in the nature of men and women that brings all of the faculties under its sway.

But the will does not make its decisions in a vacuum.

There are 3 what I call counselors to the will.

So if our will is going to be motivated to make positive decisions, and if indeed the will is the governing power, if it's the power of decision, the power of choice, as we reinforce the counselors of the will, we are more adequately able to make positive decisions.

And here are the 3 counselors of the will.

Judgment asks the question, is this decision wise for me?

So after you have eaten 1 dish of that soy ice cream that I know all of you are eating, And you are thinking about the second or third or fourth dish, or after you've eaten that 1 piece of carob chocolate pie, a cake, and you're thinking about that second piece, judgment is the discernment to say, is this best for me?

Or when you're sitting, getting your exercise, pushing the remote, and your thumb is becoming stronger, Judgment has to do with the discernment to get out of your easy chair and walk a half a mile.

Where judgment has to do with discernment, Reason has to do with the facts.

So the more you have the facts in your brain, the more you have facts that fill your head.

Facts like the most single preventable cause of disease in America is cigarette smoking.

Facts like obesity can be controlled by wise choices.

The more you fill your mind with reasonable facts, the more likely it is you'll make positive decisions.

Conscience has to do with the moral issues, with the ethical issues.

And conscience for the Christian has to do or for the believer in God has to do with the sense that I've been created by God, that I'm really not my own and is this choice healthfully going to honor Him.

So the will is galvanized to action when judgment, reason, and conscience come to bear on that will.

Positive choices are made when I recognize that those choices are a function of the human will.

Choice was a God-given gift in the Garden of Eden.

This series is called Imagine a Healthy Hundred or Creation Health.

Come with me back to that ancient garden.

In the Garden of Eden, God created Not only Adam and Eve, but he created love.

Because if you take away the opportunity of choice, you take away the ability to love.

And if you take away the ability to love, you take away the opportunity to be happy.

So an all-powerful, all-wise Creator created beings that he put in the garden.

But he did not make them like robot beings that he could control from a cosmic control center in the heart of the universe.

God did not give our first parents a head with 2 screws in it that he would unscrew and put a computer chip in there so they'd be like robots that would say, I will obey God.

That every night you could program their brain with a computer.

And every night you put the computer chip in their brain while they were sleeping, and they woke up and said, Yes, Mama, I will eat my oatmeal.

How would you like it when they put their steel arms around your face and kissed you with their steel lips.

You know, they get up in the morning, they spill their cereal all over them, there's milk dripping down, and you've just put on your good clothes, your suit, your dress to go to work, and they jump up on your lap with all that milk slipping, and they put their arms around your neck and say, oh mom, oh dad, I love you.

Because if you coerce love, it's not love at all.

And so God created Adam and Eve with this power of choice and he put them in this magnificent garden.

And in that garden There was fresh air and there was beautiful flowers and sunshine.

All the elements of health were placed there in that garden.

Squibb, the head of the pharmaceutical corporation, Squibb Corporation.

He put it this way, Adam and Eve ate the first vitamins, including the package.

God placed Adam and Eve in that garden with the fresh air and the babbling brooks and the beautiful pure water and the trees laden with fruits.

And God placed them in that garden hand in hand where love reigned and they had a positive outlook for their future.

And God gave to them in that garden a choice.

You remember what the Bible says in the book of Genesis, it's fundamental in human nature And it's fundamental in understanding who we are and our identity.

And it's fundamental in understanding how we make change healthfully.

If we understand how we were made and created, we can understand how we get off track and how we can get back on track.

There in that garden in the book of Genesis chapter 2 verse 16 and 17 the Bible says, and the Lord God commanded man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.

So God gave them the opportunity to eat so freely.

Then he said but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." So he gave them a choice there in that garden.

The tree of life, can you read this from the screen with me tonight?

The tree of life represented all that was good, positive, healthy, and life-giving.

He wants what's life-giving and health-giving.

But there was another tree in that garden.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil represented the sum of poor choices with their negative, unhealthy, life-destroying practices.

It was not that God was trying to keep something good from Adam and Eve, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil represented the sum of all wrong choices.

It represented the sum of everything that was negative, everything that was unhealthy in this world.

Rest for the Rushed

It affects our bodies, it affects our minds, it affects our emotions, and it affects our spiritual life.

And tonight we want to share with you basic principles in dealing with the stresses of your life.

Rest is a gift given from God that actually restores our emotions, invigorates our minds, and stabilizes our emotions.

It restores us physically, mentally, and spiritually.

When we enter into rest, there is that restoration process that takes place in every area of our beings.

Researchers at the University of Warwick and University College in London have discovered that lack of sleep can more than double the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

So if you're burning the candle on both ends, staying up late at night, midnight, 12, 30, 01:00 in the morning, pressing yourself at work, stressed out, getting up early in the morning, you're increasing the risk of coronary heart disease.

These researchers went on to notice something else about a lack of sleep in health that is extremely significant.

Professor Francisco Cappuccino, University of Warwick, noted that short sleep has been shown to be a risk factor not only in heart disease, but in weight gain, hypertension and type 2 diabetes.

If a person is getting lack of sleep, they're much more likely to eat more, snack more and gain weight.

They're much more likely to be afflicted with hypertension and they have a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes.

So lack of sleep affects every area of our bodies.

Let's take a look at some of the things that sleep difficulties are closely associated with.

If you go on the left of the chart, psychiatric disorders.

Now this does not mean that these are all caused by lack of sleep.

Sometimes psychiatric disorders cause lack of sleep and sometimes lack of sleep contributes to a poor mental state of mind.

But sleep difficulties are associated with the psychiatric disorders of depression, alcoholism, bipolar disorder.

People who get lack of sleep are much more likely to have destructive habits in their life like alcoholism.

Growth suppression, if you have lack of sleep, particularly in children, it causes growth suppression.

The impaired immune system, we'll talk about that a little later, lack of sleep contributes significantly to a reduction of the immune system's ability to deal with disease, diabetes type 2 as well.

On the right-hand side, if you have lack of sleep, you are more likely to have irritability.

1 person whom I talked to said, when I sleep too little, I'm like a car speeding down the highway with no brakes, emotionally.

When I sleep too little, I tend to have my nerves frayed, they tend to be on edge, I tend to be more confrontational.

So the research indicates, as we go back to the screen, that sleep difficulties are closely associated with irritability, memory loss.

Students who get lack of sleep and study all night do poor on their exams than students who get a good night's sleep.

If you have a major decision to make in your life, and you are extremely tired, try not to make that decision.

Many decisions are made extremely poorly by people who are sleep deprived.

1 thing that my wife and I have told our children is that if you've been pushing it hard at school, if you have been working excessively, try to avoid making any major decisions in your life when you're tired and sleep deprived.

When you are sleep deprived, your reaction time goes down.

That's why studies on truck drivers who have been driving the truck 18 hours a day, pulling over in these little rest stops to stop and sleep a few hours, those studies indicate that when truck drivers are sleep deprived, they are much more likely to have their reaction time down and much more likely to get in an accident.

Muscular tremors also come when you are sleep deprived.

The risk of heart disease goes up, and the risk of obesity certainly increases as well.

There are some fascinating studies on sleep in the immune system.

Sleep loss impairs immune function and immune challenge alters sleep.

When you get little sleep, you have an immune system deficiency.

When you have an immune system deficiency, often it contributes to lack of sleep.

There have been some studies done in the research labs on rats and mice.

And researchers have discovered that when you look at rats and mice, there's a 20% decrease in the white blood cell count after these rats and mice have been sleep deprived.

So the white blood cells, of course, are those blood cells in our body that help us to fight infection and disease.

You become prone to all kind of infectious diseases and colds.

Species that sleep longer in the animal kingdom tend to have higher white blood cell counts.

So if you really want to avoid the flu and some of the cold season, the less sleep you get, the more you become vulnerable to these infectious diseases.

More than 40% of all Americans sleep less than 6 hours a night.

It's like living on the edge of the cliff.

Well, you may be asking the question, what can I do to enhance my sleep?

There are what we call sleep enhancers and sleep inhibitors.

If you want to enhance your sleep, regularity is important.

If you go to bed at 9.30 1 night and 11.30 the next night and 10.30 the next night, the more irregular your sleep patterns are, that is the time of bed you go to sleep, the less likely you are to sleep well.

Now, I don't mean going out and taking a 5 mile jog before you sleep.

You're probably not going to do that anyway.

But moderate exercise, if you live in a safe neighborhood, going out and taking a walk before you sleep.

I've walked in country after country after country in the world in the evening.

Some people say, what if you're in a dangerous area?

If I'm staying in a hotel, I always like to stay on the 5th, 6th, 7th floor if possible.

And I walk up the stairs and down the stairs.

Not vigorously, but just to relax my body before we go to sleep at night.

My wife and I in some countries have not felt safe to get out of the parking lot of a hotel.

Once and a twice and a 3 times and a 4 times.

You know after you do that about 70 times you are pretty tired.

So, regularity, moderate exercise, a warm bath.

I probably take a warm bath 80% of the nights.

After I lecture tonight, I'll go up and lie in the bathtub, take a warm bath, not a hot bath.

It helps you a lot to relax those muscles before going to sleep.

If you have light shining in the room, that becomes much more difficulty for your brain to register that it's time to go to sleep.

Now, if you live in a home where you have teenage children and you want to go to bed at 10 and they want to go up to 11 and they've got the music blaring and the TV on or if you as a wife go to sleep or your husband go to sleep and your wife or husband is up with the TV in the next room, we like to establish basic ground rules in our family and 1 is that when 1 person goes to sleep, the other person respects that by doing something quiet.

If you want to sleep well, devotional reading.

Try to get regular sleep as much as I can, take some moderate exercise, go for a walk, walk up and down the stairs, do something, take the warm bath in a darkened room with quietness.

And then often I read the Psalms before going to bed.

Psalms like Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear that the earth be removed and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea?

And so I'll read the Psalms often and as I read them I begin to sense that quietness and then I pray a little bit and drift off to sleep.

If you're having trouble sleeping, try following and using some of these sleep enhancers.

If you eat 8, 9 o'clock at night and you go to bed at 9.30, quarter to 10, the blood from your brain is being drawn to your digestion and that pizza that you just had, you know, with those, that heavy cheese, I mean, that's rolling in your stomach and, You know, when you sleep, your stomach deserves to sleep too, right?

And so if you eat a late night meal, that's tough.

If you are drinking coffee or late in the evening or it's a stimulant, Coke, Pepsi, the same, Caffeinated beverages are going to tend to keep you up.

1 of the things that a lot of people try to do is they lie in their bed and watch some TV, thinking that's going to put them to sleep.

A Fresh Breath of Hope

1968, the eyes of Americans were glued to their television screens that Christmas Eve.

And they were not looking for Santa Claus and his reindeer.

The Apollo 8, with James Lovell and William Anders and Mission Commander Frank Borman, was circling the moon.

3 days before, launched on December 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 traveled to the moon in 3 days.

This was a magnificent space feat, a magnificent first for America.

It was the first manned space flight to leave Earth's orbit.

It was the first crewed voyage to return to Earth from another celestial body, Earth's moon.

And you may remember as the astronauts circled the moon, Jim Lovell radioed back to Earth and he said, the vast loneliness is awe inspiring.

It makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.

The astronauts commented later that looking at earth from the vantage point of space took their breath away.

But then on that Christmas Eve, William Anders began to read that significant message.

For all the people on earth, The crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send you.

They began to read Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 to 4.

And Americans stood there with bated breath, hearts beating a little faster, awestruck as they heard those words, in the beginning.

God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Then God said, let there be light and there was light.

And God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

We're not merely genes covering, genes and chromosomes that came together accidentally.

We're not some haphazard arrangement of cellular molecules.

God's creative works reveal an all powerful, all loving, all intelligent designer.

If you look at the laws of the universe, if you look at the way the universe operates, if you look at our environment, our environment speaks of order, it speaks of symmetry, It speaks of design.

And where there is design, there must be a designer.

Where there's intelligent design, there must be an intelligent designer.

In fact, David in the Psalms, in Psalm 19 verse 1 said, the heavens declare the glory of God.

As we look into the heavens, the heavens magnificently declare God's wisdom, strength, power, and glory.

All of creation, from the vastness of the heavens to the minuteness of the design of shells in the ocean, reveals this Creator God.

This God who is the lover of the infinite, this God who is a magnificent artistic designer, this God that created the heavens and the stars.

Let's journey tonight and look at some of that magnificent evidence that indeed He's a marvelous Creator.

What if it were 50 million miles from earth?

The earth would be consumed and burned up.

What if it were 150 million miles away from Earth?

A loving Creator God put the sun just in the right place to provide for us all of the health-giving benefits of those sun's rays that we need.

Can you think about the immensity of the universe?

Alpha Centauri, our nearest star, our what star?

Now to get a little glimpse of what 26 trillion miles is, if you were able to ride in the fastest spacecraft, If we traveled on Voyager spacecraft, the fastest vehicle ever constructed, it would take us 70, 000 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri, the first star.

When you look at the vastness of the heavens and you think of the symmetry and design, you think there must be an incredibly intelligent designer that designed all nature.

And he must be all wise, all intelligent, and incredibly all powerful.

There are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

There are a million galaxies in the bowl of the Big Dipper.

If you just think of the Big Dipper, It is so vast.

Space is so awe-inspiring it's difficult for the human mind to comprehend it.

There are 125 billion visible galaxies in the universe.

Just the galaxies, each 1 having tens of millions of stars, the visible galaxies.

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