Total Health?

How To Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses: A Health Manual for All Nations. Oak Brook, Illinois: Institute in Basic Life Principles, 2008.

Carefully reading and then applying the principles in this book would prevent a great deal of disease and even bring healing to those already afflicted with major illnesses.

The inside title page adds, and Discover Five Causes off all Diseases, which might seem to be an arrogant claim, but is supported by a great deal of evidence, both from science and from the Bible. Though the author is not named, Bill Gothard’s fingerprints appear on almost every page.

The book begins with a definition of “total health”” not perfect health, but “the ability to fulfill the purposes for which God created you.” We are told that “total health involves a restored relationship with God and the accompanying signs of joy, freedom, and inward peace.”

Next comes a series of chapters on the five factors that determine health, which are: what we think; what we say; what we do; what we eat; what we inherit. Each of these then receives detailed treatment, with a description of how they affect our physical health and how they can be adjusted to foster physical and mental well-being.

“The disease crisis of modern medicine” is that we rely too much on drugs, all of which have toxic side effects. Covering symptoms with unnecessary pharmaceutical intake, we set ourselves up on a “course of increasing drugs and diseases.”

After an explanation of the harmful effects of stress on the body, we read in the body of the work how to “resolve” the seven major stressors in life: anger, guilt, sexual lust, bitterness, greed, fear, and envy.

More specifically, the writers claim that anger affects the cardiovascular system; guilt affects the nervous system; lust affects the endocrine system; bitterness the digestive system, greed the immune system, fear the respiratory system, and envy the musculoskeletal system.

Extensive references to medical literature back these diagnoses, which were apparently contributed by C. Stephen Paine Jr., M.D., who is thanked for his extensive role in the production of book.

Fundamentally, however, the starting point for each analysis is the Bible, which turns out to contain far more specific references to the relationship of mind and body than most of us would think.

At the beginning of each chapter on the various stressors, we learn how we try to hide or deny their presence in our lives. “I am not bitter… I am just deeply hurt.” On the other side of the page are ways in which we reveal express what would otherwise remain hidden. Bitterness, for example, may come out as “harsh, vitriolic speech, being very easily offended, being extremely judgmental, hard facial features,” and other manifestations of a festering wound.

After diagnosis comes a prescription for healing, based on the Bible and illustrated by vignettes of people who have found freedom by carrying out biblical instructions.

I was amazed at just how intensely practical information was packed into this slender volume, and how much wisdom is contained in a very brief compass. The reader will find step-by-step guidelines on how to “have a courageous conversation” and “how to transform lust into the dynamic of genuine love,” for example.

Some of the aphorisms bear careful pondering:

“To love someone is to understand him.” “One of the greatest gifts we can give a neighbor is a listening heart.” “It is not wrong to desire greatness. It is wrong to strive for it in our own way.” “The truest test of being a servant is how we respond when we are treated like one!” “Love is not an emotion but a choice we make based on God’s will. “Love can always wait to give. However, lust can never wait to get.”

Because of my profound admiration for the value of this beautifully-produced, lavishly-illustrated guidebook to health, I hesitate to make any criticisms. No human production is perfect, however, and How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses has a few that should be mentioned.

Though in general I found the interpretation of the Bible adequate, a few sections seemed to stretch the original intent of the biblical passage quoted. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) probably means that we are to evince kindness to all sorts of people, even those who are unlovely. Instead, it is somehow made to support the otherwise helpful concept that we should be sincere and enthusiastic in the way we greet people!

Indeed, one of the main criticisms leveled against Gothard over the past several decades has been his propensity for forced interpretations of the Bible. Perhaps he would benefit from more input from biblical scholars.

Some will be turned off by another of Gothard’s trademarks: A “simple recipe” approach to resolving complex and sometimes chronic problems. One could get the impression that it’s just a matter of going through a checklist of recommended activities, and everything will be fine. For some reason, this doesn’t bother me, perhaps because I think there is the principles are so true, and most of the application of them so helpful, that a great deal of benefit really would come from following the author’s advice.

More difficult for me to understand were the ways in which a biblical principle is linked with a “resulting quality.” “Go the Second Mile” will produce deference; “Observe Communion” (the Lord’s Supper) will result in thoroughness. And so forth. I found this to be the only really jarring feature of an what is basically an extremely helpful treatise on total health.

Overall, however, I would strongly recommend How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses. It deserves repeated and thoughtful reading, and forms a good complement to my The Lord’s Healing Words, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and AuthorHouse.

You may obtain this book from the Institute of Basic Life Principles http://store.iblp.org/products/rsds/.

G. Wright Doyle

Harvard Healthy Diet

Harvard’s Healthy Diet

As I was cleaning out the garage the other day, I came across a back issue of one of my two favorite health magazines, Bottom Line Health. (I’ll introduce the other one next time.)

Anyway, their lead article was responding to the then-new USDA Food Guide Pyramid which, like its predecessors, reflects the food industry’s influence, and thus emphasizes meat and dairy products.[1]

The independent researchers at Harvard School of Public Health came up with another Healthy Eating Pyramid, radically different from the government one, but fully in line with all that I have been reading on this subject for more than thirty years (not that I am an expert; I am just saying I was not surprised by their findings).

To be brief: If you want to avoid unnecessary illnesses, such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, follow the guidelines below:

Make whole-grain foods the basis of your diet at each meal. That’s whole wheat bread, “brown” rice, and other whole grains. NO white rice or bread or pasta made with white flour.

Surprisingly, the other half of the bottom layer of the “pyramid” should consist of plant oils, “Including olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut and other vegetable oils.”

Next come vegetables “in abundance” and fruits “2-3 times” a day.

Third from the bottom are nuts and legumes (peas and beans of all sorts), also to be eaten two or three times a day.

Fish, poultry and eggs may be consumed “0 –2 times” a day according to these Harvard researchers.

Finally, they advise that red meat, butter, as well as white rice, white bread, potatoes, pasta and sweets should be used “sparingly.”

To put it another way: If you want to die a slow, painful, and expensive death, or drop dead suddenly from a heart attack, have your full of red meat, milk, butter, white bread and pasta, topped off with lots of delicious desserts.

At least that’s what unbiased scientists at our top university have found, long after hundreds of other studies had come to similar conclusions.

---

[1] “Harvard’s New Healthy Eating Plan,” Bottom Line Health, Volume 19, Number 7, July, 2005, pages 1-3. To subscribe, go to BLHealth@Boardroom.com.

Healing Words

    For several decades, I suffered from something like fibromyalgia. During that time, I read countless articles and many books about nutrition and health, but I found that the most helpful instruction came from the Bible.

Over a period of several years, I compiled a number of references to passages in the Bible that spoke about physical, mental, and spiritual health, and wrote short comments on them. You can find the results of this study in The Lord’s Healing Words, available from www.AuthorHouse.com.

The former dean of the medical school of the University of Virginia, Dr. Robert M. Carey,  wrote in his preface, “I commend this book most enthusiastically to you.”Dr. Francis MacNutt, author of Healing, The Power to Heal, and other widely-read books, said it was “Very well done.” Other readers have told me how much they have been helped by The Lord’s Healing Words, so I encourage you to find out for yourself.

The 200-page volume contains six months of daily readings from the Bible on physical, mental, and spiritual health, with brief commentary. The comments are meant to stimulate your own reflection, prayer, and action to produce substantial change in your health and overall happiness.

Without offering any guarantee of a pain-free existence, this book does uncover the wisdom of God’s Word for a healthy lifestyle. A special section on men’s health addresses common problems we men face and contains essential principles for along, effective, and joy-filled life.

TLHW is not a “page-turner”; nor is it meant to be. It works best for you to go slowly, one section at a time, thinking about what you have read and applying it to your own life.

Happy reading!

Wright

Happiness and health

Happiness and Health 

            Notice that I didn’t say “Health and Happiness.” The order is deliberate. Though bad health can induce depression (I know from experience), the reverse is also true (as I also know from experience). Negative thoughts can ruin your health. That’s a fact so well established that I have heard one expert say, “It’s not a question whether much illness is brought on, or aggravated, by our emotions, but of how much. The debate (he claimed) is over whether 75% or 85% of sickness is psychogenic.”

            His figures may be high, but there’s no doubt that unhappiness is bad for your health. 

            So, what to do? Just “snap out of it”? It might not be that easy, but there are some action steps to take when you are feeling low. A few that work for me: 

-           Listen to “happy” music. Schubert’s Trout Quintet is helping me beat the blues right now.

-           Do something usefully physical (as distinct from punching a hole in the ceiling, as one young man I know did with a karate kick in a fit of frustration). I’ve read that you can’t exercise and be depressed at the same time. I just vacuumed the floor, which killed two birds with one stone – completing a chore I promised I would do and getting me to move around. 

-           Do something necessary. I plan to (try to) reconcile my checkbook after writing this. 

-           Look out the window. It somehow changes your perspective. 

-           Think of someone with real problems. You could start with Darfur, or the hundreds of thousands with frostbite in western China right now. They’re watching their herds and crops die under heavy snowfall and can’t do a thing to help. 

-           Praise and thank God. Not only does he deserve our worship and gratitude, but when we praise him and thank him at all times and for all things, such an action serves as an antidote to the blues.

            During and after starting to write this blog Saturday, several things went “wrong” for me. At first I was pretty frustrated; then I realized that these were opportunities to practice what I was “preaching,” so I deliberately began to offer thanks for each of the annoyances that had obstructed me from finishing this post. It worked! My mood went from grumpy to glad. 

            I hope this helps you as a new work week commences  after an early Daylight Savings Time has perhaps made it a bit harder to get up and face the day.

(Sorry I don’t know how to make the type the same size yet.)