Ultimate Prescription

Brain Health (Part 1)

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP180113A


00:01 The following program
00:02 presents principles designed to promote good health
00:04 and is not intended to take the place
00:05 of personalized professional care.
00:07 The opinions and ideas expressed
00:09 are those of the speaker.
00:10 Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions
00:13 about the information presented.
00:15 If you look up the word cognition in the dictionary,
00:17 you'll see, it's defined as the mental faculty of knowing,
00:21 which includes perceiving, recognizing, conceiving,
00:24 judging, reasoning, and imagining.
00:27 More simply put,
00:28 it just refers to simply thinking.
00:30 Brain health is the focus of today's program,
00:32 and we'll be sharing biblical prescriptions
00:35 that you can use to improve your brain health today,
00:38 no matter where you're starting from.
00:39 The Ultimate Prescription starts right now.
01:02 Thanks for joining us here today
01:03 on the Ultimate Prescription,
01:04 a program dedicated to helping us
01:06 better understand God's design for our lives
01:08 and experience better health by following His plan.
01:11 I'm your host Nick Evenson here with Dr. James Marcum
01:14 for an excellent program today
01:15 in which we'll be discussing brain health.
01:17 And, Dr. Marcum, welcome to the program.
01:19 Thank you.
01:20 It's nice to be here, Nick,
01:21 and I want to compliment you on that lovely tie.
01:24 Oh, thanks.
01:26 We try and look our best, look credible here.
01:27 You know, my son Jake, okay.
01:30 And he's in high school.
01:32 And I've got a bunch of ties at home
01:33 and I offered to share him
01:35 and he said, "Dad, those are old men tie."
01:37 He won't wear any of the new ones,
01:39 you got this new model
01:40 so that's a very nice tie, Nick.
01:42 But we're talking about a very important subject today,
01:45 and that's how our brain affects our physiology.
01:48 Yeah.
01:50 So the way we treat our brains
01:51 can be used to prevent disease as well as treat disease.
01:55 And we've gone through some of this
01:56 in what we use is our textbook for biblical prescriptions
01:59 and that's on the Biblical Prescription for Life,
02:02 seven-week Bible study.
02:03 Yeah.
02:05 Yeah, Dr. Marcum, the Biblical Prescriptions for Life study,
02:07 we wanna show this to folks
02:08 and tell them a little bit more about it.
02:10 This is made to be used as a tool,
02:12 a resource for folks
02:13 who want to have a meeting in their home weekly
02:15 or in their church
02:17 to share what we've kind of grown up
02:19 with knowing the health message
02:20 to share this with other folks, right?
02:22 That's exactly right.
02:23 And we go through biblical prescriptions,
02:24 why we're sick.
02:26 We come from the basic biblical prescriptions
02:28 that some people take for granted like moving,
02:31 being outside,
02:32 but one of the most important chapters
02:34 that we have is on mental health,
02:37 treating the brain right,
02:38 because what goes into the brain
02:40 affects the entire physiology.
02:42 You know, the brain is made of three functional layers,
02:45 the top part, the prefrontal cortex,
02:48 which we communicate with God and each other,
02:50 empathy, advanced thoughts, knowledge, abstract thinking,
02:54 the parts of the brain that deal with emotions,
02:56 and then the part that we share with animals
02:58 that just basically keeps us alive.
03:00 And this helps people
03:02 understand the brain a little bit better
03:03 and how important it is to our physiology.
03:05 Yeah.
03:07 And if you like to get a hold of that,
03:08 we encourage you to contact 3ABN,
03:10 it's available through their bookstore.
03:11 So Biblical Prescriptions for Life, it's seven-weeks
03:14 and we think that will be a great resource for you
03:16 to share with your friends.
03:17 Yeah, in part of that study,
03:20 I interview, I had a patient that came in
03:22 that had a lot of brain problems
03:24 and the solution to or that started
03:26 in her health care prescription was to deal with the brain.
03:29 Awesome.
03:31 Well, you know, let's take a look at that clip now,
03:32 The Biblical Prescriptions for Life, Chapter 6,
03:35 section on brain health.
03:39 Jane was distraught,
03:42 she found her husband of 11 years with another woman.
03:46 Not only was she working a 40-hour work week,
03:49 but she was taking care of her three children.
03:52 She and her husband had not communicated
03:54 in some time.
03:56 She was hurt, ashamed, confused, and scared.
04:01 All of these emotions were causing her brain
04:04 to be overloaded.
04:06 She came to me for some advice
04:08 and I believe the greatest value
04:09 I had was in mere listening.
04:12 Where do you start when your world is upside down?
04:16 The brain is on overload
04:17 and you cannot even concentrate,
04:19 nevertheless eat, do good job at work,
04:22 or even raise your children.
04:24 Many of you watching this have had similar experiences.
04:29 These situations are so complicated
04:32 and yet this is life.
04:34 As we've been studying together,
04:36 I hope the first place
04:37 we've all learned to turn for help for clarity for hope
04:41 for some sense of normalcy is our great physician,
04:45 for "I can do all things
04:48 in Christ which strengtheneth me."
04:50 Notice,
04:52 this biblical prescription does not say some things
04:55 but all things but only through Christ.
04:59 I asked Jane, if she done this, and she done this,
05:02 but she was not seeming to hear God's voice
05:05 or feel His comfort.
05:07 I began to talk to Jane about
05:09 what her brain was going through the tremendous stress.
05:12 How I turned on the emotional system of the brain
05:15 which is the limbic system.
05:17 And her alarm system,
05:18 the amygdala was doing its job preparing the body to survive.
05:22 The fight or flight system was in full gear,
05:25 but this constant bombardment of chemical
05:28 was not helping the situation.
05:31 The adrenaline, the cortisol, the cytokines,
05:33 inflammatory proteins were speeding up her heart,
05:36 raising the blood pressure, causing her to lose sleep.
05:40 She was not hungry.
05:41 But the most significant problem
05:43 that I saw was she could not think rationally.
05:47 When the stress chemistry is on,
05:48 the brain just wants to be safe to stay alive.
05:52 The body lives in the here and now in that situation
05:56 and not in the future.
05:57 The higher functioning parts of the brain,
06:00 the prefrontal cortex is blunted
06:02 as a body just wants to stay alive and feel well.
06:06 I explained to Jane that God was there ready to help,
06:09 but we needed her to use the prefrontal cortex.
06:13 But what does one do when our world is crumbling
06:17 from a broken relationship,
06:19 an illness, a death, loss of a job,
06:22 or shaken belief system?
06:24 What do we need to do
06:26 when we are so shaken that the part of the brain
06:27 we need most is not working?
06:31 How does God create in us a new brain?
06:35 What did he do in the past?
06:37 What are the practical steps
06:38 we can take if and when this happens to us?
06:42 Hopefully by the end of this week,
06:43 you'll have a prescription, a strategy, a plan,
06:47 a software program uploaded to help us
06:50 as well as those we hold so dear.
06:53 We have a lot to cover this week.
06:55 So let's start by thanking and praising God
06:58 and then ask Him for the help and clarity
07:00 as we learn and study together.
07:03 You know, Dr. Marcum, it's a tragic story.
07:05 There's a lot of stress that people are under these days.
07:08 I wonder do you have an update.
07:09 Does this end well for her? Yes.
07:11 Jane is making progress.
07:12 But like any chronic condition,
07:15 she had to take one step at a time.
07:19 And, you know, when talking about brain health today,
07:21 we can't cover every detail that's out there.
07:24 It's too complex.
07:26 But we can let people know
07:28 that the brain is an important part to health.
07:31 And if the brain is not working well,
07:33 nothing else works well.
07:35 If the brain doesn't work well,
07:37 it puts stress on the body like Jane.
07:38 In fact, Jane had so much stress on her body
07:42 that she couldn't think rationally.
07:43 You know, she had so much problems going on
07:45 and sometimes even when even she tried to worship,
07:48 there was so much stress on her body
07:51 that she couldn't even worship.
07:52 She couldn't even, she felt like
07:54 she wasn't hearing God's voice
07:55 even though God was there working in her life.
07:57 She felt like she couldn't do.
07:59 There's some out there that might feel this way too,
08:01 you might be under so much stress,
08:03 so much brain problems
08:05 that your prefrontal cortex is not working as well,
08:08 the stress part of the brain that stay alive,
08:10 the part that we turn on that deal with pain.
08:12 You know,
08:14 when animals have pain that they move away from that.
08:16 When people have pain, they have to do something
08:18 to deal with the pain they're under.
08:20 Right.
08:21 You know, they have to deal with it.
08:22 And Jane was reaching for the wrong things
08:25 to deal with pain.
08:26 And so we had to start all over in her brain health
08:29 and teach her the right things to do.
08:31 Well, what's the first steps in the brain health?
08:34 What's the first biblical prescription?
08:37 And in Chapter 6 of Biblical Prescriptions for Life,
08:40 we go through that in a more detail,
08:42 but this is very complex physiology.
08:45 But how can you eat right
08:47 if your brain doesn't work right?
08:49 How can you sleep well
08:50 if your brain doesn't work right?
08:52 How can you make good decisions regarding your health care
08:55 if your brain doesn't work?
08:56 How can you even follow a doctor's appointment?
08:59 So when I first started working with Jane, Nick,
09:02 it was hard to even communicate with her
09:04 because, you know,
09:05 when we were in the room together,
09:08 you felt super stressed, she was stressed.
09:11 And, you know, when you feel stressed,
09:12 when someone's in the room with you,
09:14 you know that something's not right.
09:15 Yeah.
09:17 And I wanted to help her understand peace.
09:20 And so we went through biblical prescriptions,
09:23 and the very first one
09:24 we did is we had to calm down her physiology,
09:27 so in worship, so she would know about God.
09:31 So we taught her how to do worship warm ups.
09:33 Okay.
09:35 How to warm up to worship,
09:36 so she could turn down the stress in her brain,
09:38 she could worship better.
09:40 So what does that mean?
09:41 Well, I mean, you know,
09:42 in the morning, you get ready for breakfast,
09:45 there's certain things you do.
09:46 You get ready for work, and you put on your clothes,
09:49 and you get cleaned up,
09:50 you prepare yourself to go to work.
09:52 Sure. Yeah.
09:53 Well, the most important thing
09:54 that I do every day is my worship.
09:56 Mm-hmm.
09:58 So I want to prepare for worship,
10:00 just like I would prepare
10:01 for any other important activity.
10:03 So I went through some of the physiology of,
10:05 how do we get our brains prepared to meet our God?
10:11 You know, how do we do that?
10:12 And we went through the steps
10:13 and we don't have enough time to go through all of them,
10:15 but we try to activate the prefrontal cortex.
10:18 Right.
10:19 We try to turn down stress,
10:21 whether it be from deep breathing,
10:22 or stretching, or saying a prayer
10:25 where we invite the Holy Spirit to come into our lives.
10:28 And when the Holy Spirit is there,
10:30 and God as Christ is making us our worship acceptable,
10:34 you know, remember, make my worship acceptable,
10:37 then things start to happen.
10:38 And, you know, she said, you know, I need a new brain.
10:41 And she realized that she couldn't do it on her own.
10:43 And as she...
10:45 The Holy Spirit was working in her,
10:46 things started to improve one step at a time.
10:50 And then as her brain,
10:51 as she fed her brain through worship,
10:52 the brain started growing,
10:54 turned down some of the stress then she started,
10:56 God was there all along, God never left her.
10:58 Yeah, absolutely.
11:00 She just didn't have that comfort.
11:02 But as time has grown on,
11:03 her worship has helped her brain
11:05 turned down some of the stress chemistry,
11:07 she started to make some lifestyle changes,
11:10 things started to come together for Jane, okay.
11:13 And she realized that none of us are perfect.
11:16 We all have bad genes.
11:17 We all have bad genes in our brains.
11:19 We have bad genes at other places.
11:22 And we all need a Savior, okay.
11:24 And when she started realizing that the real solution,
11:27 the real biblical prescription
11:28 was to start in worship for her health,
11:30 and that would lead her to other things
11:32 that would improve her brain function,
11:34 whether it be drinking more fluids,
11:36 or maybe taking antioxidants,
11:38 or maybe eating some nuts and berries
11:40 and things that help maybe exercise,
11:43 treating these other medical problems.
11:44 As she started in the right place,
11:46 things started to come together,
11:48 even though the world shouted,
11:49 no, this is not where you need to go,
11:51 you know, some of the other places
11:53 they wanted to start with pills.
11:55 Well, I said, well, some people have genetic needs for that.
11:58 But that's not where you want to start as a source of truth.
12:01 Let's try this first and see if this doesn't improve.
12:04 So the brain is very complicated.
12:06 But for our audience today,
12:08 the main point I wanna give you is pay attention to your brain.
12:12 Okay, pay attention to your brain,
12:14 get it working optimally.
12:16 Do things to help take care of your brain.
12:18 And one of the biggest things that I want to emphasize
12:20 in taking care of your brain is the act of worship.
12:24 You know, God wants to create
12:25 a new heart, a new brain.
12:27 And when you come into worship, physiologic things that happen,
12:31 when you invite the Holy Spirit is that it works continuously.
12:34 When you invite God into your heart,
12:36 it goes, you know, the memories
12:37 and this goes into the part of the brain
12:39 that stores memories.
12:40 It's working all day long.
12:41 And when you have a text
12:43 or something to go over our prayer,
12:45 you can keep worship going,
12:46 even if you're not conscious of it
12:48 throughout the day.
12:49 It's where you turn over your brain to
12:51 and the brain health is,
12:52 that's one of the keys to keeping people on track.
12:55 I guess the verse coming to me,
12:57 "All you who are burdened heavy laden
12:58 and I will give you rest,"
13:00 that really becomes really a mindset
13:03 when you're worshiping rather than a mindset
13:04 of being stressed and worried all the time.
13:06 When you come into worship with Jesus,
13:08 you have rest in peace.
13:10 And it's truly a gift and there's nothing we can do.
13:12 We have to accept that gift.
13:14 We have to know where to get it.
13:15 We have to feel the need of this gift.
13:17 We all need a savior, we need this for our brains
13:20 and the world is causing more stress than ever before.
13:23 It wants us to get away from this.
13:25 But think about it.
13:26 In the Bible, it's always been about worship.
13:29 You know, Daniel and his friends,
13:31 who did they worship?
13:32 You know,
13:34 even when Christ was here, did they worship the true God?
13:36 Or did they worship there some of the other things
13:38 that was going on?
13:39 Throughout the Old Testament it's always been about worship,
13:42 and if we start in worship,
13:43 that's a good place to start the day.
13:45 It was a great place for Jane's brain health
13:48 when we have all these other distracters
13:50 that's turning on the stress part of our brain,
13:52 and she had to give up some things she didn't like,
13:54 you know, she was on the media way too much
13:56 that was stressing her out.
13:57 She was worrying so much about what other people thought
13:59 and some of that stuff.
14:01 She didn't need that,
14:02 she's watching the news too much,
14:03 and that was clogging things up.
14:05 So she had to have a whole new mindset.
14:07 She needed God to help her create a new brain,
14:11 a new way of thinking and approach in life.
14:12 Yeah.
14:14 Well, Dr. Marcum, thank you for sharing that story with us.
14:15 I think there's a lot that we can learn from that.
14:17 We're gonna take a short break and be back
14:18 with more on brain health in just a moment.


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Revised 2019-03-21