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Health Devotional
How to Avoid Brainruptcy
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee. Isa. 26:3.
Half the people who live to be 85 years of age have some loss of brain function that results in the confusion and memory loss we often call senility, or the mental illness we label dementia.
But it's not because they use up the brain. According to psychologist Elden Chalmers, we are born with 100 billion brain cells, and it's virtually impossible to use them all up in a lifetime. The problem results from either neglect (not using the brain enough) or abuse (not eating the right food).
Paul Giem, of Loma Linda University School of Medicine, analyzed data from the Adventist Health Study that has tracked the diets and diseases of 34,000 Seventh-day Adventists since 1976. He also compared 136 Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians with the same number of meat eaters matched by age and sex. Vegetarians had more than three times less dementia. Plus, none of the vegetarians suffered from stroke-related dementia, whereas five of the meat eaters did. Giem's conclusion? "If you stopped eating meat today, in 10 years you would have half the risk [of dementia] of a heavy meat eater."
Why does Giem believe this? He says the closest diseases to dementia, pathologically speaking, are all transmissible by eating infected meat!
Although eating meat may be linked to brain disfunction, hundreds of other things can effect your brain's health as well. But when I read about Paul Giem's study it reminded me again of the warning Ellen White gave almost 100 years ago: "Again and again I have been shown that God is bringing His people back to His original design, that is, not to subsist upon the flesh of dead animals" (Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 82). "Among those who are waiting for the coming of the Lord, meat eating will eventually be done away; flesh will cease to form a part of their diet" (ibid., pp. 380, 381).
Is now the time?
Lord, You know the way I should go. May Your Holy Spirit convict me to do what is best for my body and brain. Amen.
Half the people who live to be 85 years of age have some loss of brain function that results in the confusion and memory loss we often call senility, or the mental illness we label dementia.
But it's not because they use up the brain. According to psychologist Elden Chalmers, we are born with 100 billion brain cells, and it's virtually impossible to use them all up in a lifetime. The problem results from either neglect (not using the brain enough) or abuse (not eating the right food).
Paul Giem, of Loma Linda University School of Medicine, analyzed data from the Adventist Health Study that has tracked the diets and diseases of 34,000 Seventh-day Adventists since 1976. He also compared 136 Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians with the same number of meat eaters matched by age and sex. Vegetarians had more than three times less dementia. Plus, none of the vegetarians suffered from stroke-related dementia, whereas five of the meat eaters did. Giem's conclusion? "If you stopped eating meat today, in 10 years you would have half the risk [of dementia] of a heavy meat eater."
Why does Giem believe this? He says the closest diseases to dementia, pathologically speaking, are all transmissible by eating infected meat!
Although eating meat may be linked to brain disfunction, hundreds of other things can effect your brain's health as well. But when I read about Paul Giem's study it reminded me again of the warning Ellen White gave almost 100 years ago: "Again and again I have been shown that God is bringing His people back to His original design, that is, not to subsist upon the flesh of dead animals" (Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 82). "Among those who are waiting for the coming of the Lord, meat eating will eventually be done away; flesh will cease to form a part of their diet" (ibid., pp. 380, 381).
Is now the time?
Lord, You know the way I should go. May Your Holy Spirit convict me to do what is best for my body and brain. Amen.
Used by permission of Health Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.
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