Leave the Rest to God

There once was a wise old farmer who lived in a village.  All he had in the world was a horse, his son, and a small piece of land.  One night a storm came through the village and spooked his horse.  The horse broke through the fence and ran away.  The next day all the villagers came to the farmer saying “Oh, how unlucky!  What will you do?  Your only horse has run away!”  But the farmer simply replied, “We’ll see.”  About a week later the horse returned.  But he was not alone.  He came back leading 5 other wild horses!  The villagers all came singing praises.  “You are so lucky!  You are now the richest man in the village!”  But the farmer simply replied, “We’ll see.”  The next day, as the farmer’s son was trying to tame the new wild horses he was bucked off and broke his leg.  The villagers came once again saying, “Oh what terrible fate.  Your only helper and son is injured.  You are so unlucky.”   Again the farmer simply replied, “We’ll see.”  A week later, the region fell under attack and the military came door to door looking for young men to fight but seeing the farmer’s son with his broken leg, they moved on to the next house.  

We currently live in a time where stress and worry are abundant.  We have more free time to fill and we have incredible opportunities at our fingertips.  But with freedom and infinite choices comes constant worry and regret.  Did I make the right choice?  Should I have done it differently?  What do they think of me?  We constantly fret and over analyze our lives so much so that it wrecks our health.  Stress and worry put us in a state of chronic “fight or flight” where our immune systems shut down, our digestive and reproductive systems turn off, and our blood pressure, breath and heart rate skyrocket.  

But often the things that we are so worried about we have zero control over.  You cannot control the traffic so why would we allow it to take even a moment of joy from our lives??  The problem is that we can never have a full perspective.  We cannot know the future.  So what may seem like the worst thing ever today, becomes your saving grace tomorrow –  just like the farmer losing his one horse.  The situation that would ultimately save his son from dying in battle could have sent him into a dark depression.  What if the traffic you ran into kept you from getting a speeding ticket?  We will never know and that’s the whole point!  We can never know what might have happened or what will happen in the future.  So the best thing we can do is to only focus on the things we can control and recognize that God is in control of the rest.  The Bible tells us, “Do not worry” or “Do not fear”, over 365 times.  Someone really wants to drive home the point that it will all be okay in the end.  Even if your world is falling apart all around you, even if you’re stuck in traffic and running late, God is still in control and your future is secured. 

So today, focus only on what you can control and leave the rest to God.

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Living and Healing

I often daydream about the stories of the Bible.  I like to put myself in their shoes and try to envision what it would have been like.  What would I have done or said if I was there, especially when it comes to the miracles?  Imagine sitting there in the packed house, listening to Jesus blow your mind, when all of a sudden the roof starts crumbling.  I bet people started panicking trying to get out ASAP.  But there sits Jesus, nice and calm just waiting to forgive the sins and heal the man that is about to descend through the new hole in the roof.  I also like to imagine that being MY roof and these guys busting a hole in it… What about the parting of the sea?  Growing up by the ocean, it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that the water just opened up and the sea floor dried, and here we go just walking with our donkeys where the fish were just swimming 5 minutes ago.  Then there were the frogs.  Here we have Egypt, one of the most powerful nations to ever exist with a “God King” sitting on the throne.  How does God humble them?  He sends frogs!  Your nation has all the wealth, every resource, the most powerful army on earth yet you are laid low by frogs.  If you don’t think God has a sense of humor then we’re not reading the same stories.  My favorite miracles are always the ones of healing.

God’s miracles prove over and over that He is in complete control.  He is in control of the weather, the land, the animals, every government, every war and battle big and small.  He holds all the power.  But wielding power, dominating, and laying low His enemies is not His nature.  He is a God of love and hope and we see it time and time again in His miracles of healing.  Nearly everywhere that Jesus went He healed.  From the blind and lame to the infertile and diseased, He healed them all.  Now given the nature of my work, I take these miracles to heart.  Every day I see people that are broken.  People that have gone through years of suffering with no answers other than drugs and surgeries leaving them only more sick and more broken.  There are more than a few people that I would absolutely dig a hole in a roof for so that their pain could end.  So, I can easily put myself in the crowd and feel the emotions as Jesus restored His people, taking away their burden of suffering and reviving their hope and faith.  But many people today write off the miracles of the Bible as nothing more than history and not the description of how God continues to operate in our world.  Many of us don’t see or feel the miracles that God performs every day in our lives.  

Life is a miracle.  It sounds cliché, but just the fact that you woke up today is a gift from God.  It is the continuation of one of His first miracles where He breathed life into dirt and created man and that miracle is still alive and well inside us every moment.  I think that if more people fully understood that then the way we live our lives would be very different.  You see, God did just set it and forget it.  He left us with an active miracle, the miracle of healing.  God knew that in order to perpetuate the gift of life He would also need to implant a miracle that kept the machine running.  Imagine if every scratch, every accident, every fall, every bite of an In-and-Out burger left you permanently damaged.  We wouldn’t last long!  But, God designed you to heal.   There is so much hope in that fact alone: You are designed to heal!  God doesn’t make junk.  He designed you perfectly and He designed you for health and abundance not for sickness and brokenness.  But the problem comes when we live our lives in opposition to how He created us.  From the beginning God gave us everything that we could ever need.  He made us food to eat, fresh water to drink, natural remedies from nature to heal our wounds and ailments.  But we have turned away from God’s original plan.  We made our own food and medicines that cause more harm than good.  We live our lives in such a way that there is CONSTANT damage being done, which requires a constant miracle of healing to undo. Thus, we live lives of brokenness falling short of all the goodness we were created for.  But simply understanding that life and healing are ever-present miracles in our lives, freedom from pain and suffering are only a few decisions away.  Choosing to live a lifestyle in alignment with God’s design, reducing the self inflicted damages of man made food and chemicals allows the miracle of healing to fully unfold in your life, leading you back to a place of hope and faith in Him. 

Miracles happen every day, even the sea splitting ones!  But the miracles of life and health are ever present and just as Jesus healed the sick restoring hope and faith, God continues to heal His people if only would put your hope and faith back in Him and stop putting it in false man made promises.

 

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Only You Can Prevent Disease

There’s a billboard on I-25 that has a huge picture of Smokey the Bear.  I remember Smokey from growing up in Florida.  As wet and humid as Florida can be, I recall many forest fires during the summers, and where there is fire, there is Smokey warning us of the dangers.  Smokey’s message is “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  But as I was passing the sign on the interstate the other day, I started thinking to myself, “That’s not true. There’s a lot of ways and a lot of people that can prevent forest fires!”  We have entire organizations whose job it is to prevent fire.  Now I understand the notion.  We all must take responsibility because any one of us can cause a fire.  But that is a shared burden.  And as I often do, I started thinking about health and the more I thought about it the more I realized, only you can prevent disease!

Your health is your most important asset.  If you lose your health you lose your freedom.  It doesn’t matter how much money you make, where your kids go to school, where you live, nothing matters when you lose your health.  How far would you travel, how much would you spend just to get your health back?  Your entire life is turned upside down at the first sign of disease.  The point is driven home in the fact that the number one cause of bankruptcy in our country is unpaid medical bills.  When you lose your health, there is nothing you won’t give up to get it back.  I don’t think most people realize this simply due to the fact that we have given away the responsibility of keeping us healthy over to the government and the pharmaceutical industry.  Just to paint it in black in white, the pharmaceutical industry profits off sick people, not healthy people.  Why in the world would you put your health in the hands of a system that only benefits if you stay sick??  What if Smokey the Bear made billions of dollars off of fighting fires.  How likely would it be to see him campaigning to PREVENT the fires?  He’d be the first to START the fires. Luckily ‘ole Smoky is a goodhearted bear and loves the forest!  But can we say the same of the authorities we’ve placed in charge of our health?  

I’m not here to argue the life saving benefits of emergency medicine.  If I get in a crash and lose my leg, please do not take me to the chiropractor!  But crisis care and health care are two very different things.  The CDC has been responsible for the health of Americans since 1945.  How well are they doing?  To tell the health of a nation you need look no farther than the children.  So after nearly 80 years, here’s the numbers: 

• Ranked 169th in the world for Infant Mortality
• 48% of children have at least one chronic disease
• Cancer is the leading cause of death in children
• 1 in 7 children on an antipsychotic drug
• 1 in 6 children learning disabled 
• 1 in 12 suffer with asthma 
• 1 in 5 with an emotional, mental or behavioral disorder 
• 1 in 5 with obesity 
• 1 in 3 overweight
• 1 in 13 with allergies 
• 1 in 34 with Autism

These are pre- 2020 numbers.  Since the introduction of mass COVID shots in kids, these numbers are rapidly worsening.  The fact is that those whom we have handed our health to, have failed us.  It has become more clear than ever that “Only you can prevent disease.”  

Your health and the health of your children is your responsibility and yours alone.  No government, no industry, no doctor can make or keep you healthy.  But most people don’t think they know how to be healthy or what to do when sickness comes so they blindly follow whatever the talking heads on the screens say.  Again, when billions of dollars are involved, they don’t want you to make your own decisions.  They want you in the dark and in fear so that you run to them for health care.  We are being told from the day we are born that our bodies are sick and broken and that we require manmade drugs and injections just to keep us alive.  I’m here to empower you and tell you that you and your children were designed perfectly and you were designed for health and abundance!  You DO know how to be healthy!  You are way more equipped than you know.  

One of the biggest problems I see in our world is that we have replaced ancient wisdom with science and research.  It used to be that knowledge was passed from one generation to the next and in that way, the things that proved beneficial for humanity carried on for thousands of years.  But as science began to take over, wisdom became mocked and ridiculed as religious practice, cultish, or quackery.  We lost the knowledge that enabled our ancestors to survive.  Things like herbal remedies have been banished to the back corner of health care.  But, luckily our instincts are still holding on.  We have the basics in place!  We all know the foundations of what to do. 

If we were to poll 100 people, all 100 would agree that if you eat well and exercise that your chances of being diagnosed with heart disease, cancer, or diabetes would go down.  We can all agree that when you put chemicals into your body that it will cause damage.  And we can all agree that stress is bad for your health.  We can even agree that your nervous system must be able to function properly in order for you to be healthy.  These are the basics of health that we all know.  These are the remnants of ancient wisdom that has been lost.  This is how we begin to reclaim responsibility of our health.

Only you can prevent disease.  Only you are responsible for your health.  No one can do it for you.  Luckily God designed you for health and vitality and He left the knowledge deep within you.  Where ever you are on your health journey you already know the answer.  Eat well.  Move often.  Minimize stress and toxins.  Keep a clear nervous system.  The rest will follow.  

 

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

Gut Health & Chemical Stress

Recently we took a deep dive into stress and how it impacts the health of your gut, but the effects of stress go much deeper than just giving you a tummy ache.  If you recall, stress leads to a state of “fight or flight”.  In fight or flight your nervous system switches your entire body into survival mode.  Blood rushes away from your organs and into your muscles so you can fight! (Or take flight.)  Your non-essential systems shut down to give more energy to the essential systems because they are in a state of emergency!  You don’t need to be digesting your lunch if a bear is after you, all you need to do is survive to digest another day.  This system is perfect in emergency situations, but it can be deadly if we get stuck.

Stress is a constant in our world today.  It comes from every direction.  Remember there are 3 main stressors that keep us in fight or flight in our modern world: emotional, chemical, and physical stress.  The one we are all most familiar with is emotional stress.  Your kids are out of control, you’re stuck in traffic and late for a meeting, the bills are due, etc.  There are infinite things that cause us emotional stress but what about the other two?  I believe that the chemical and physical stresses are by far more hurtful than emotional stress because most of us don’t know about them, yet they are just as harmful to our health.

Chemicals are everywhere.  They are in the air, in the water, in the food, and in the products you put on your skin every day.  Chemicals have become standard in our modern lives especially in the U.S.  The problem is that every single chemical that comes into your body is considered a health damaging toxin.  Thankfully God designed us to detox!  You have entire systems in your body that are made just to remove the toxins.  All day every day your body is in constant search of toxins so that it can get them out.  But what if there is an overwhelming amount of toxins??   

When I was growing up, one of my chores was to pick up the dog poop in the backyard.  What a great job!  Especially when you grow up with big dogs like Labradors and Rottweilers…  I never really had a set timeline or schedule.  The dog poop just needed to be picked up.  Sometimes I would get lazy and not do my job for several weeks.  Then I’d find out people were coming over and the backyard needed to be spotless.  In those times the amount of poop was overwhelming!  I was stressed to the max running all over the backyard with my pooper scooper.  But that is exactly what happens in your body.  When small amounts of toxins come in your body can handle them.  But when overwhelming amounts of toxins come in, your body goes into fight or flight.  It goes into survival mode.

Chemical stress is one of the reasons your gut is so vital to your health.  Your gut is one of two barriers from the outside world.  The first barrier is your skin.  Your skin’s job is to keep the world out of your body.  It acts as a barrier that prevents most things from getting in.  But your gut does the exact same thing.  Even though it is on the inside, it is still a line of defense keeping the outside world out and only allowing certain things in.  But when your gut lining is damaged by too many toxins, too much sugar and grains, gut killing antibiotics, or even chronic stress, all of a sudden all those toxic chemicals are able to get in.  It’s like those medieval battles where the castle walls get breached and the enemy comes flooding in, overwhelming the good guys.  There’s just too many to handle. 

Even though there are toxins all around us, there is a lot that we can do to manage them.  One of the easiest ways I ever found to reduce dog poop is to have less dogs or at least littler dogs!  Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs, BUT your health isn’t worth it.  I know you love your toxic food and soda.  I know antibiotics are easier than more holistic and God made solutions, but it’s costing you your health!

Join us here at NGFC on August 16th @ 6PM as we take a deep dive into all things Gut Health!

 

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc

No Guts, No Glory

These days the importance of gut health has really come to light.  We know now that your gut does way more than just digest food (which in and of itself is a miracle!).  Beyond turning your broccoli into human cells, your gut helps balance hormones, produce essential enzymes, house 70% of your immune system, create serotonin and dopamine (both neurotransmitters for your brain), and so much more.  But these days more and more people are coming into our office with gut related issues.  Gas, bloating, and pain are becoming all too common, but it’s also the secondary issues that are concerning.  Gut issues lead to things like infertility, hormone disruption, behavior issues (in both kids and adults), autoimmune disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer… the list goes on forever.  So it behooves us to look at the cause of gut issues.  Luckily it all comes down to one problem: stress.

We all know stress is no good.  If you polled 100 people, all 100 would agree that they don’t want stress in their life.  But stress is a much bigger problem than we give it credit for.  One of the issues with stress is that there are 3 different types.  

Emotional Stress – Chemical Stress – Neurological Stress

The one we are most familiar with is Emotional Stress.  This is the one that occurs when the bills are due and the bank account is low.  Or the school calls and your child is in trouble again (my mom had to deal with this one a lot).  Maybe there’s conflict in your relationships, or your boss is a jerk.  Maybe it’s as simple as the traffic on your commute.  Emotional stress is abundant in our world.  

The problem with emotional stress is what it does to our health.  You see God knew we would deal with stress in our lives, so he gave us a built in response to it.  He designed our autonomic nervous system with two parts.  The sympathetic and the parasympathetic.  Sympathetic is the fight or flight response and parasympathetic is the rest, digest and heal response.  You can only be in one or the other, never in both.  The way it was designed, when we are out in the field tending our sheep and a lion comes immediately our sympathetics turn on and we go into fight or flight mode.  In fight or flight, our blood flow is directed away from our brain and organs to sent to our muscles, our heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing all increase, our digestion, reproductive system, and immune system all turn OFF.  This is great because it gives us the ability to run (flight) or turn and face the lion (fight like David from the Old Testament).  Then once we have saved our sheep, the stressor is gone, and we switch back to rest, digest, and heal mode.  Blood is sent back to the vital organs, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing return to normal.  We start to DIGEST and heal again.  A perfect design.

The problem is that our stressors are no longer lions.  Like I said before, our world is one big bucket of stress!  Studies show that even having your cell phone near you causes stress.  We eagerly tap it just to see if we missed a notification.  On average, if you can see your phone you think about it every 7 seconds.  In our stressed out world, we get stuck in fight or flight mode.  Heart rate and blood pressure stay up while immune function, reproduction, and DIGESTION stay down.  

One of the easiest ways to see this is in children.  It might not seem like it, but I am an introvert at heart and always have been.  I was the little boy that hid behind my mom as much as she would let me.  Talking to people was one of my biggest fears growing up.  I remember every Sunday on the ride to church how stressed out I would get at the notion of all the people I’d encounter.  But the worst part was the tummy aches.  My stress would send my stomach into a fit.  It makes sense looking back.  I was deep into fight or flight because of my stress.

Finding ways to manage your emotional stress is ESSENTIAL to your gut health.  That’s why Mindset is one of the 5 Essentials of Health.  Your thoughts control your health via the autonomic nervous system.  When your emotional stress is stuck “on” your gut cannot break down food.  It can’t utilize that 70% of your immune system.  It can’t help to balance your hormones or produce the essential neurotransmitters for your brain.  

Of the 3 types of stress, Emotional Stress is likely the most difficult to handle as many things are outside of our control.  But the reality is that if it’s not in your control there is no reason to stress over it.  Stop worrying over the things you can’t do anything about.  You can’t control what others think or say about you.  You can’t force the traffic to clear.  As much as you’d like to, you can’t make your child do what you want them to.  Minimize your emotional stress by only worrying about the things that you have control over and that way you will spend the majority of your life resting, digesting, and healing.

On August 16th here at NGFC we are taking a deep dive into Gut Health.  We will look at Emotional, Chemical, and Neurological Stress, what they are, and most importantly what to do about it to make sure you and your family are living the best life possible!  This is an event I highly recommend bringing a friend to.  Far too many people unnecessarily struggle with gut issues.  Help your friends by bringing them!  See you there!

In Health and Faith,

Dr. Marc