Health & Temperance – Something’s Fishy

By Allan R. Handysides and Peter N. Landless

A vegetarian diet is one that does not include “flesh” foods. Some argue that fish was not included in the term “flesh” in the late nineteenth century; even today many who consider themselves vegetarians include fish as a part of their diet. Our Lord both ate and served fish in His glorified body, which would logically lead to an understanding that fish, intrinsically, is a useful article of diet.

Even Ellen White ate fish during a period in which she claimed she had not eaten any “flesh” foods. This has led some researchers to believe that she did not include fish under the terminology of “flesh,” which usually connoted red meats. She did, however, caution about fish taken from polluted waters.

Since her time the rise in concentrations of mercury, cadmium, PCBs, and dioxin in natural waters has been of many multiples, and we do not feel comfortable recommending fish as a regular article of diet. Of course, we recognize that there are places where the waters are not polluted, and that there’s some evidence of benefits from consuming fish.

Several studies show that the consumption of fish two to three times per week lowers the risk of a nonfatal heart attack by 21 percent, of death from coronary heart disease by 38 percent, and of stroke by 31 percent.1 These studies have Continue Reading…

Health & Temperance – Heart Rescue Project

We have all walked by the Red Cross sign in airports indicating where a heart machine is located. Do you know what is in them and how to use it? Try this video and see what you think.

If you pick the wrong choice—-the man dies—-choose wisely

May save a life.

http://www.heartrescuenow.com/

Health & Temperance – The Importance of a ‘Stop Day’

The following is an article from CNN Health. It’s not calling it a “Sabbath” per se, nor is it landing on just THE Sabbath day…. but the importance of a ‘stop day’

(CNN) — Dr. Matthew Sleeth is a former emergency room physician. He’s also the author of “24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life.”

CNN: You begin your book by writing about a store owner who vowed to close his store on Sundays, so his employees and their families, as well as his customers, could take the day off. But it didn’t stay that way for long. What happened?

Sleeth: For almost 2,000 years, Western culture stopped — primarily on Sunday — for about 24 hours. Even when I was a child, you couldn’t buy gasoline, you couldn’t buy milk. The drugstores weren’t open. The only thing that was open was a hospital. Even in dairy farming country, we would milk cows, but we wouldn’t bring in hay.

And so society just had a day where they put it in park. (That) was Sunday… until the last 30 years or so.

CNN: Why do you think taking one day off a week is so important?

Sleeth: We go 24/7 now, and I think it’s having health consequences. I think more and more, there’s a consensus that it leads to depression and anxiety.

It’s interesting, when a doctor sits down and does Continue Reading…

Health & Temperance – CHIP Program Relaunches

The Coronary Health Improvement Program has undergone a complete refresh and has been relaunched as the Complete Health Improvement Project (CHIP). The new CHIP program is being relaunched by the church-owned food company Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing in Australia. The program, founded 25 years ago by Hans Diehl, has updated materials and a new co-presenter, Darren Morton (pictured here with Diehl), a physiologist from Avondale College. The program has been used extensively in North America and is an excellent community outreach for churches. “The new CHIP resource is phenomenal,” said Dr. Brian Will, medical doctor and CHIP leader in the Meadow Glade Church in Battle Ground, Wash. “It will be simpler to run, but will be more professional and will come across well in the community.” Read more about the new program at AdventistReview.org.

Health & Temperance – Health for a New Year

Now is a great time to start a regular exercise program. In a 10-year study, researchers followed 654,827 people and tracked their exercise habits. Researchers found that the life-expectancy of participants increased as exercise time increased. People who walked 75 minutes each week lived 1.8 years longer, those who walked 30 minutes per day lived 3.4 years longer, and those who walked 1 hour per day lived 4.2 years longer. You can read more about the study at Wellsource.com. To start a regular exercise program, make sure to set a specific, manageable goal and use a variety of daily reminders. WebMD.com has some more great tips for starting your new program.

Health & Temperance – Staying Healthy and Fit over the Holidays

Many people have good intentions of eating healthy and staying in shape over the holiday season, but end up overindulging in once-a-year delicacies and skipping regular workout sessions. Staying healthy during this time of year doesn’t have to mean giving up your favorite holiday treats, but instead learning how to control yourself around them.

April Kneifel, a registered dietitian at Curves International, Inc., says it isn’t always what you eat, but how much of it that can keep you from staying healthy over the holidays.

“It really just comes down to being sensible about your portions,” says Kneifel. “An easy way to reduce your portion sizes is to use a smaller plate. If there is less room on the plate, you’ll be eating less food overall.”

Kneifel says to eat slowly and enjoy the company of others while dining, which will give you something else to focus on besides food.

“Avoid going back for seconds,” Kneifel says. “Chances are you’ll feel like a stuffed turkey if you do!”

Kneifel also suggests eating healthy snacks such as granola bars, almonds, and fruit while traveling or doing holiday shopping.

“Packing snacks is a great way to Continue Reading…

Health & Temperence – Moderate Drinking May Increase your Risk of Breast and Colon Cancer

Mounting evidence finds even moderate drinking may increase your risk of breast and colon cancer

Something to ask yourself: Is it worth it?

By Judy Peres | Chicago Tribune staff reporter

You eat your veggies, you exercise at least a few times a week, you gave up cigarettes and hormone-replacement pills, and you have a glass of red wine every day, all because you care about your health.

But one of these things is not like the others.

While your attention has been elsewhere, scientists have amassed persuasive evidence that drinking alcohol — any form of alcohol, even in moderate amounts — can pose a serious threat to your health.

Researchers have known for nearly 20 years that drinking alcoholic beverages can cause cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus and liver. But those diseases don’t get much publicity. In 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer added breast and colon cancer — two of the four major killer cancers — to the list of malignancies known to be fostered by alcohol. The risk is “dose dependent,” meaning the more you drink the higher the risk.

According to comprehensive reviews of the scientific evidence, people who average just over one drink a day (100 grams of alcohol in a week’s time) increase their chances of developing colon cancer by about 15 percent. For those who consume about four drinks daily, the risk is 40 percent higher.

Women who have one to two drinks a day increase their breast cancer risk by 13 percent. With four drinks, the risk is 50 percent higher.

source: Chicago Tribune

Health & Temperance – Soy Can Help Lower Blood Pressure

In the United States, about one in three adults has high blood pressure of 140/90 or higher. Left unchecked, high blood pressure can lead to serious complications such as blood clots, cholesterol and plaque build-up on artery walls, heart attacks, or strokes. In most cases, high blood pressure is preventable and treatable, and medication may not be required. For example, in a recent study, researchers found that eating soy protein helped reduce blood pressure. Read more on this HERE and other current health topics at Wellsource.com.

Health & Temperance – Caffeine’s Effects on the Human Brain

Lisa Stark, from ABC News, looks at how caffeine interacts with our brain. Click the image to watch the newscast.

Health & Temperance – Biblical Meditation

Article on ‘Mindfulness’ meditation being used in hospitals and schools

There was an article included in the last newsletter that caused some people to think that we are promoting the practice of mindfulness meditation. Let me reassured you that this is not the case. The article was included in the newsletter as information for the readers only and not to promote these dangerous practices. However, given the current climate in which some pagan practices are being taught in some Christian churches is easy to understand how this article could have been cause for concern. Here is an article I wrote a few years ago on the subject of biblical meditation.

 

Meditation as it is presented in the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy

Meditation is a biblical and spiritual practice which has been lost in Christianity.  Yet, one of the most important things we can do as Christians is to think about God as the highest object of our thoughts. We live in a very busy world and a very fast society.  Some of us, it seems, are driving in the fast lane at high speed going nowhere.  We are so preoccupied in getting things done, that the most important thing, which is establishing and maintaining a closer relationship with Jesus, remains undone.  Many people reject meditation because they associate it with eastern religions.  However, meditation is a biblical concept.  In the Psalms the difference between the righteous and the wicked is that the righteous meditates in God, his words, and his works, whereas the wicked meditate in their wickedness.

Many psalms encourage meditation on the law of the Lord, “But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night (Ps 1:2); on God, “When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night-watches” (Ps 63:6); meditate on God’s work, “I will meditate also upon all thy work, and muse on thy doings,” (Ps 77:12);  “I have more understanding than all my teachers; for thy testimonies are my meditation” (Ps 119:99).  Meditation must be pure and spiritual because it must be pleasing to God, “May my meditation be pleasing to him, (104:34).  Ellen G. White said that much meditation is need it for the success of the work.  She writes,

There should be much prayer, much meditation, for this is highly necessary for the success and prosperity of the work. A spirit of traffic should not be allowed in anyone who is connected with the office. If it is permitted, the work will be neglected and marred. Common things will be placed too much upon a level with sacred things.¹

She also says that Satan knows how

Health & Temperance – ‘Mindfulness’ meditation being used in hospitals and schools

By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY

Challenges are landing fast and furious on Capitol Hill. So Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, feels he has to arrive at the top of his game every day. And Ryan says he has found a way to do that: He meditates for at least 45 minutes before leaving home.

Ryan, 35, sits on a floor cushion, closes his eyes, focuses on his breath and tries to detach from any thoughts, just observing them like clouds moving across the sky — a practice he learned at a retreat. “I find it makes me a better listener, and my concentration is sharper. I get less distracted when I’m reading,” he says. “It’s like you see through the clutter of life and can penetrate to what’s really going on.”

Once thought of as an esoteric, mystical pursuit, meditation is going mainstream. A government survey in 2007 found that about 1 out of 11 Americans, more than 20 million, meditated in the past year. And a growing number of medical centers are teaching meditation to patients for relief of pain and stress.

More than 240 programs in clinics and hospitals teach the same type of meditation that Ryan learned, says Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed mindfulness-based stress reduction 30 years ago at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Other types, such as transcendental meditation, use a mantra or repeated phrase.

‘A colossal shift in acceptance’

Some kind of meditative practice is found in all the world’s religions, says Shauna Shapiro of Santa Clara (Calif.) University, co-author with Linda Carlson of the new book The Art and Science of Mindfulness. Most include focusing attention and letting thoughts and emotions go by without judgment or becoming involved.

Kabat-Zinn credits “a colossal shift in READ MORE

Heath & Temperance – We’re Eating Less Meat. Why?

Americans eat more meat than any other population in the world; about one-sixth of the total, though we’re less than one-twentieth of the population.

But that’s changing.

Until recently, almost everyone considered their dinner plate naked without a big old hunk of meat on it. (You remember “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner,” of course. How could you forget?) And we could afford it: our production methods and the denial of their true costs have kept meat cheap beyond all credibility. (American hamburger is arguably the cheapest convenience food there is.) This, in part, is why we spend a smaller percentage of our money on food than any other country, and much of that goes toward the roughly half-pound of meat each of us eats, on average, every day.

But that’s changing, and considering the fairly steady climb in meat consumption over the last half-century, you might say the numbers are plummeting. The department of agriculture projects that our meat and poultry consumption will fall again this year, to about 12.2 percent less in 2012 than it was in 2007. Beef consumption has been in decline for about 20 years; the drop in chicken is even more dramatic, over the last five years or so; pork also has been steadily slipping for about five years.

Holy cow. What’s up?

It’s easy enough to round up the usual suspects, which is what a story in the Daily Livestock Report did last month. It blames the decline on growing exports, which make less meat available for Americans to buy. It blames it on ethanol, which has caused feed costs to rise, production to drop and prices to go up so producers can cover their increasing costs. It blames drought. It doesn’t blame recession, which is surprising, because that’s a factor also.

All of which makes some sense. The report then goes on to blame the federal government for “wag[ing] war on meat protein consumption” over the last 30-40 years.

Is this like the war on drugs? The war in Afghanistan? The war against cancer? Because what I see here is: READ MORE

 

 

Health & Temperance – Despite Obesity Crisis, Govt Slow to Rein in Fast Food Industry

When the fast food chain McDonald’s decided to add oatmeal to its menu in January 2011, it literally sugar-coated the offering as a “portable, affordable and balanced breakfast solution… to help make it easier and more inviting for our guests to eat more whole grains and fruits”.

Although a single serving of plain oatmeal has one gramme of sugar, one serving (253 grammes) of McDonald’s fruit and maple oatmeal with brown sugar contains 32 grammes of sugar. One serving of the same oatmeal, without brown sugar, contains 18 grammes of sugar, according to the company’s nutrition facts.

“Why would McDonald’s… take a venerable ingredient like oatmeal and turn it into expensive junk food?” lamented New York Times columnist Mark Bittman in February 2011.

McDonald’s oatmeal, he pointed out, “contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and (is) only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin”.

But critics say McDonald’s uncanny ability to turn an inherently healthy food into an unnaturally processed product (the oatmeal itself contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavour”, according to Bittman) is not even the most egregious of the stunts that large food corporations manage to pull.

A Nestle supermarket that set sail in the form of a barge on the Amazon River in Brazil in June 2011 could be one of the more outlandish efforts by the food industry to offer an expanding range of customers a plethora of processed and packaged foods.

Even though processed food is inexpensive, noted Bittman, “the costs aren’t seen at the cash register but in the form of high health care bills and environmental degradation”.

In the United States, food activists who are highly critical of read more

Media & Adventist Benefits – Paul Harvey on Ellen White and Nutrition

Once upon a time, a hundred years ago, there lived a young lady named Ellen White. She was frail as a child, completed only grammar school, and had no technical training, yet she lived to write scores of articles and many books on the subject of healthful living.

Remember, this was in the days when doctors were still blood-letting and performing surgery with unwashed hands. This was in an era of medical ignorance bordering on barbarism. Yet Ellen White wrote with such profound understanding on the subject of nutrition that all but two of the many principles she espoused have been scientifically established.

Professor of Nutrition, Dr. Clive McCay of Cornell said, How much better health the average American might enjoy if he but followed the teachings of Mrs. White.

Perhaps we should reread what she has taught: The oil, as eaten in the olive, is far preferable to animal oil or fat. Today we know about cholesterol.

She knew: Fine flour white bread is lacking in nutritive elements to be found in bread made from whole wheat. Today we have re-enriched our bread.

She wrote: Do not eat largely of salt. Now we know we should keep the sodium intake low.

She wrote whole articles on the importance of not overeating; of not becoming overweight; of eating at each meal two or three kinds of simple food; and eat not more than is required to satisfy hunger.

We have come to accept the wisdom of such advice so completely that it is difficult for us to realize how revolutionary her theories were almost a century ago. (Seventh-day Adventists consider her knowledge divinely inspired.)

A long time before we learned about TV snacks, Mrs. White wrote: After irregular eating, when children come to the table, they do not relish wholesome food; their appetites crave that which is hurtful to them.

She urged: Pure air, sunlight, abstemiousness, rest, exercise.

She wrote: Tobacco is a slow, insidious, but most malignant poison. It is all the more dangerous because its effects are slow and at first hardly perceptible. Divinely inspired or not, Ellen White was, indeed, ahead of her time.

Are there additional recommendations which this remarkable woman urged upon us which we have, so far, ignored?

Two of her teachings haunt the more progressive nutritionists because if she is right about these also, most of us are wrong and have yet to catch up to her advanced knowledge of nutrition.

Mrs. White wrote: All-wheat flour is not best for continuous diet. A mixture of wheat, oatmeal and rye would be more nutritious.

Also, Mrs. White was essentially a vegetarian. She wrote: The life that was in the grains and vegetables passes into the eater.

We receive it by eating the flesh of the animal. How much better to get it direct. Do you suppose we’ll discover she was right about these things, too?

Source: The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Students’ Source Book; The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Volume 9. 1962; 2002. Review and Herald Publishing Association

Media & Adventist Benefits – Undercooked Pork

This newscast is very eye opening. It touches on a few of the things that are important to Seventh-day Adventists; family values and healthy eating habbits. Click HERE to watch the newscast.