Category: Mental and Emotional

New research is providing insight into how stress can shrink your brain cells and prematurely age your immune system.

Essentially, the researchers say, stress can addle your mind and make you older. But there’s good news too: Exercise can make a huge difference. And, in the case of the brain at least, time might heal the wounds caused by stress.

“The brain is very resilient,” said Bruce McEwen, head of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York City. “Give it a chance and it will make every effort to repair itself.”

McEwen said his research has found even more signs that repeated stress actually causes neurons in the brain to shrink, at least in rats.

Earlier research showed that the neurons shrink in the hippocampus, and that seems to impair memory in response to stress, he said. More recent research suggests that the same thing happens in the brain region called the prefrontal cortex, which is crucial for decision-making and attention, he said.

When stressed, rats lose what McEwen calls “mental flexibility” — “the ability of the animal to use a familiar set of cues in a different way when the location of a food reward is shifted.”

What does this mean for humans? “Stress hormones act on the brain to remodel it and change it,” McEwen said. “The brain of a stressed animal or human being is a different brain. It has different capacities, and it may be more anxious and have less ability to pay attention or learn or remember.”

But there are potential fixes for those with mental stress, McEwen said. “A combination of psychotherapy, cognitive behavior therapy and pharmaceuticals could actually change the brain and restore it more or less to normal,” he said.

Exercise is another potential booster, he said, adding, “there’s growing evidence that exercise has very powerful effects.”

Outside the brain, stress can wreak havoc on the immune system, according to another study to be presented at the meeting.

Research suggests that stress can shorten the chunks of DNA at the tips of chromosomes in cells, making it harder for them to work properly, according to the researcher, Elissa Epel, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. The bits of DNA “are like the plastic caps on the ends of our shoelaces. They prevent the ends from fraying,” she said.

What does this mean? “We examined healthy women and found that psychological stress was related to shortened” tips, she said. As a result, the immune system of the stressed-out women is apparently aging at a faster rate.

The treatments for this problem are what you might expect. “Everything we already know about fighting off chronic disease, like getting sufficient sleep, staying active throughout life, and having a healthy diet” may stave off premature aging of the immune system, too, Epel said.
-HealthDay News

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on stress can shrink and age your brain.
This was a very interesting study with the researcher found was that stress actually causes neuron’s in the brain to shrink and very interesting what he also showed was stress hormones act on the brain to remodel it and change it. The stressed brain has different capacities and it may be more anxious and have less ability to pay attention, learn or remember. Also what interesting in this article which we disagree with is the head researcher said that the answer was a combination of psychotherapy cognitive behavior therapy and pharmaceuticals. We would alter this, the answer to balancing the brain, reducing the stress is to live a life following our heart not our mind. When we follow our heart, and when we do what God has put in our heart, we will walk in His love, His joy, His peace and His hope. This does not mean it is an easy life, because when we follow our heart we’re usually attacked by our old mind, our old will, our old emotions, the world system around us, and the people around us that are filled with the world system and the old mind, will and emotions themselves.

You always know when you are following your heart because there is great resistance from around you. People think you’re crazy, they think you’re foolish, they think you shouldn’t do what you are doing. But again this is the life of following the heart, it’s not an easy life, but it is an awesome life and you will feel God’s presence manifest powerfully in your life. So when we follow our heart, what overflows from the heart fills the mind. And this is the mind of Christ within us. This is the God mind that flows from the heart.

This is very different from the mind filled with the flesh, the world, religion, the time and space bound mind, the five sense bound mind, the ego filled mind, this is a very different mind. The mind that flows from the heart is one that flows from what God put in the heart. So, our recommendation would not be one of cognitive therapy, and psychotherapy, but one that is still, it sits at the feet of the Lord waiting, on Him speaking into their heart which will fill their mind, their will and their emotions, with the love, the joy and the peace and the hope of God. This brings balance into every part of your being. And then also to contradict the head researcher’s statement that says, pharmaceuticals would be used, we would disagree again with this and we would go back to what the father of medicine, Hippocrates, said, he said, “let your food be your medicine.” “Let your food be your medicine”. Or as Thomas Edison, the genius inventor said, “The Doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and the prevention of disease”.

This is what our prescription would be on that side, and basically to make it very simple as this article closed when they were talking about how the other research has shown that the DNA can be effected by stress and that the psychological stress is related to shortening tips of the DNA which would weaken the immune system and increase aging at a faster rate. What that researcher said was that everything we already know about fighting off chronic disease is what you should expect like getting sufficient sleep, staying active throughout life, and having a healthy diet may stave off premature aging of the immune system. This is a beautiful statement. It’s what we’ve said, and we keep saying. It’s the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health. This is the fountain of youth, this is what will transform us into God’s image and likeness. This is what will keep our body, mind and emotions healthy and healing, and keep us in balance in body, mind and spirit.

Remember stress is a big cause of all disease including cancer. So any disease prevention program, disease reversal program or alternative cancer treatment must address all stress both physical and mental/emotional.

One final comment, stress is not all bad. Other research has shown there’s two types of stress. Eustress, which is good stress and distress which is bad or negative stress. They found that in laboratory animals that were stressed but had a way out, so there was a stress but there was a way to overcome the stress, their immune systems were actually stronger than the animals with no stress at all, and greatly improved were the animals that were stressed with no way of escaping.

If we want to build stronger muscles, we need to stress them with some weight or some activity and that stress of the muscle causes the muscle fiber to grow larger and stronger. So, it’s not that we don’t want any stress, this life we live is filled with stress, but if we don’t live from our minds, but we live from our hearts, we’ll see that all these stresses are just tests that will transform us more into God’s image and likeness. If we do not try to get out of this stress, out of the pain, but we stay in the pain and stress and let God reveal His truth, His word and His power which is His spirit to empower us, to walk this life. This life of Total Health of body, mind and spirit.

Lung capacity normally declines as a person ages but being angry can speed up the process according to new research.

In a study of 670 men ranging in age from 45 to 86, they found that males who had higher levels of long-standing anger at the start of the eight-year project had significantly poorer lung function at the end of it.

“This study is one of the first to show prospectively that hostility is associated with poorer pulmonary function and more rapid rates of decline among older men,” said Dr Rosalind Wright, of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

Even after taking account of other factors such as smoking that can also have an impact on lung power, hostility and anger had a negative effect.

Anger, hostility and stress have also been associated with heart disease, asthma and other ailments.

Wright and her team suggested that the negative emotions could change biological process and may disturb the immune system and cause chronic inflammation.

“Stress-related factors are known to depress the immune function and increase susceptibility to or exacerbate a host of diseases and disorders,” said Dr Paul Lehrer, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in an editorial in the journal.

He added that it is unknown how chronic anger contributes to physical deterioration but said the researchers established a link between chronic anger and age-related deterioration in lung function.
-Thorax

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on anger speeds up deterioration of the lungs.
This research confirmed the link between mind, emotion and body. Everything in your health, your total health has a body, mind, and emotion connection. It’s nice to see it backed up in the research. In this study it showed that males that had a higher levels of long standing anger, had significantly poor lung function in the eight year project of studying them. What the research team showed, was that negative emotions could change biological process. That may disturb the immune system and cause chronic inflammation. Also it showed that stress related factors are known to depress the immune function, increase the susceptibility to or exacerbate a host of disease and disorders. So what is this saying? What you do to the mind you do to the body and also reverse what you do to the body you do to the mind. So, if I’m under stress, if I’m holding anger and hostility, I’m going to cause inflammation in my body and that inflammation is going to lead to a weakened body, more susceptible to inflammation and disease of the immune system and all other systems of the body. So, this actually physically showed it in the research how mind affects body, but also on the other side, body affects mind. What you do to the body you do to the mind. This can be seen very easily from a diet point of view.   See how kids react the day after Halloween and the day after Easter when they receive all the refined sugar from candy. Teachers will tell you these are the worst days of the school years. Kids are hyperactive, they exhibit attention deficit disorder, and they are very unmanageable on those days. So, the mental, emotional pattern was dictated by the diet or the food that went into the body physically. So one must live a total health lifestyle which revolves around the
Seven Basic Steps to Total Health™.

When we live the 7 Basic Steps each and every day we are leading a healthy lifestyle that will balance the body, the mind and emotions. So, we will know that when we live the 7 Basic Steps we’re taking care of the physical body which will balance the mind and emotions, and then also we know that when we’re living a life that is connected to God and this is where the prayer, meditation and stillness come in, that reduces the mental, emotional stresses, the angers, the hostilities and that in turn will help heal the physical body.

“There is increasing evidence that there is a very strong relationship between sleep quality and physical and mental health,” said Dr. Phyllis C. Zee, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“If you have poor sleep, there is an association between that and poor health,” Zee said.

Still, physicians should be asking their patients about the quality and quantity of their sleep, Zee said. “Sleep should be another vital sign,” she said.

In one study, led by Richard L. Nahin, a senior advisor for scientific coordination and outreach at the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, looked at why people had trouble sleeping and how many were using alternative drugs to help them sleep.

Insomnia and trouble sleeping are most often associated with high blood pressure, heart failure, anxiety and depression, according to a national survey of 31,044 adults. “That’s unusual. It had been most often thought that insomnia was quite prevalent on its own, but only 4 percent of the people who said they had insomnia said they had it without any of those conditions,” Nahin said.

The researchers also found that 1.6 million Americans are using alternative therapies, such as melatonin to treat their insomnia. “That’s quite high when you consider that there is very little reliable data on the efficacy and safety of using the products people are using,” Nahin said.

“Another study found that people who have sleep-related breathing disorder — marked by frequent pauses in breathing, labored breathing, or reduced breathing during the night — were two to 2.6 times more likely to develop depression. Moreover, the odds of depression increased as breathing disorders became more severe, according to researcher Paul E. Peppard and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin.

“If you think insomnia is an annoyance and merely something you should tough out, that may be a mistake,” said Michael L. Perlis, director of the Sleep Research Laboratory at the University of Rochester, in New York. “It may lead you down the path to other morbidities. It would also be a mistake because it’s treatable.”

Other studies in the same journal issue found that:

• Fewer hours of sleep may contribute to poor health in young adults.
• Those in rural areas who sleep fewer hours appear to weigh more.
• The immune system may play a role in narcolepsy, a disorder characterized by an uncontrollable urge to sleep.
• The immune system may be affected by a lack of sleep that contributes to inflammation and a variety of diseases.

-Archives of Internal Medicine, HealthDay

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Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on Poor Sleep causes Health Problems.
Very interesting in this article just confirmed how critical sleep is in your total health. According to the researcher, it says there is increasing evidence that there is a very strong relationship between sleep quality and physical and mental health. And what they found in this research is that sleep is tied into every aspect of your health and from the immune system to the cardio vascular system to the mental emotional state of a person, even to the amount of inflammation in the body. So, it is obvious, it is one of the Seven Basic Steps to Total Health. It is a very important basic step because it was designed by God;

We were designed to go to bed when the sun went down and get up when the sun comes up. And the closer we live on that schedule, the more we are going to balance our immune system, balance our hormonal system including the thyroid gland. We are going to balance our nervous system and neurological system. We are going to decrease the inflammation in our body.

This all comes with proper amount of sleep at the right time. Time is critical. The more hours before midnight has a double effect on the body. Remember if your sleep is decreased and you get little or now pre-midnight sleep you weaken your immune system and increase your cancer risk. A simple treatment is to simply get to sleep by 8PM every day. So the hours between the eight and midnight have a double effect compared to the hours after midnight. So remember, you want to be in bed by eight o’clock, and you want to be up by six. As close to that as you can, the more you will balance your system. Even if you get the same amount of hours, 9 to 9 1/2 hours, but you went to bed at midnight and you woke up at 9:00 – 9:30, this does not balance the system. Because you’ve lost the most critical hours, which were the four hours before midnight.

Also a side note is the use of melatonin for sleep. This is not recommended for the reason that if you take anything that artificially stimulates your hormonal system the system will grow dependent upon that stimulation and stop secreting the hormones on it own. This throws the hormonal system completely out of balance. Instead of taking supplements or medications start on the journey to total health by following the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health.

Oslo teens who drink the most sugary soft drinks also have more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress, according to Norwegian researchers.

Their study of more than 5,000 Norwegian 15- and 16-year-olds showed a clear and direct association between soft drink intake and hyperactivity, and a more complex link with other mental and behavioral disorders.

They surveyed the students, asking them how many fizzy soft drinks with sugar they had a day, and then questions from a standard questionnaire used to assess mental health.

The teens who reported skipping breakfast and lunch were among the heaviest soft drink consumers, Dr. Lars Lien and colleagues at the University of Oslo found.

“There was a strong association between soft drink consumption and mental health problems among Oslo 10th grader”.

“This association remained significant after adjustment for social, behavioral and food-related disorders.”

Most of the students said they drank anywhere between one and six servings of soft drinks per week.

Those who drank the most — more than six servings a week – had the highest scores.

For hyperactivity, there was a direct linear relationship — the more sodas a teen drank, the most symptoms of hyperactivity he or she had.

The worst problems were seen in boys and girls who drank four or more soft drinks a day. Ten percent of the boys and 2 percent of the girls drank this much.

The researchers said it was possible that other substances in the soft drinks, such as caffeine, were to blame for the symptoms, and they did not check other possible sources of refined sugar in the children’s diets.
-Reuters, American Journal of Public Health

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on sugar linked with mental problems in Norway.
This was a very interesting study, it’s one that has been known for many years but it’s very good that they did this study to confirm it. What this study showed was, when sugar goes into the body, the sugar was in this study was the form of soft drink intake. When sugar goes into the body as we spoke of before, not only does it weaken your immune system, make you more prone to cancer and all other pathogens, which is bacteria, viruses, parasites, candida, and cancer cell formation. It also throws the mind and emotion balance off and in this study, the children, ages 15 and 16 year olds that drank the most soft drinks had the more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress.

Again this has been known for quite a long period of time, ask any school teacher that has younger children; ask them what the two worst days to teach in the school are. They are usually the day after Halloween and the day after Easter. These are the days after kids had the most refined sugar in their system and they become hyperactive, ADD, ADHD, all these things are greatly increased when sugar goes into the body. What is the mechanism? There’s many possible ones, but one is sugar depletes the body of B vitamins. And B vitamins are the vitamins of your nervous system. They are also your anti stress vitamins and your energy vitamins, so it is very important that we don’t stress the system out with refined sugar which depletes our system and causes the nervous system to go into dysfunction. It’s also interesting to note people that eat high sugar diets, or more refined sugars, flours and starches and more cooked food, they tend to have more inflammation in their body. Sugar causes inflammation. Sugar causes pain. Sugar causes, as this study showed mental emotional imbalance and sugar opens the door to most forms of diseases as we spoke of in the past. Increases cancer risk and will increase risk of most all diseases because of the increased inflammation in the body due to the sugar consumption.

So how can we reverse all of this? Very simply, it’s just stop eating it.

These sugars are not necessary in the diet. Children can eat non sweetened sugar in the form of fruit, but non sweetened fruit not genetically altered fruit that is hybrid for sweetness and sugar vegetables are acceptable. But any other sugar form, especially in a cooked form, refined flours, starches and sugars, turn into sugar in the body and throw the mind and emotions out of balance and also increase inflammation and also increase risk of most all diseases.

The amount of time people spend sleeping may affect their weight, study results suggest.

The study looked at people living in rural areas. Previous studies conducted in urban and suburban areas have had similar results, which suggests that sleep loss may play a role in the increasing rates of obesity in the US.

Researchers have proposed that shorter sleep duration may affect levels of two weight-control hormones: reduced levels of leptin, a hormone associated with satiety, and increased levels of ghrelin, associated with hunger.

Dr. Neal D. Kohatsu, an epidemiologist at the California Department of Health Services in Sacramento, and his associates were interested in studying rural populations because obesity rates are higher and lifestyle patterns of nutrition, physical activity, work hours, and sleep differ from those in more populous areas.

According to the researchers’ report in the Archives of internal Medicine, theirs is the first study evaluating the relationship between sleep duration and body mass index (BMI) in rural settings. BMI reflects weight in relation to height, with 20-25 classified as normal, 25-30 as overweight, and over 30 as obese.

The team analyzed data collected in an agricultural county in southeastern Iowa, from a survey of a random sample of 990 employed adults. The subjects were asked about sleep duration, physical activity associated with employment, symptoms of depression, alcohol consumption, snoring, and other demographic information. Height and weight were measured during the same visit.

There was a straight-line relationship between a higher BMI and lesser amount of sleep. The average BMI ranged from 30.24 among individuals sleeping less than 6 hours per night, to 28.25 for those who slept more than 9 hours at a time.
– Archives of Internal Medicine

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on obesity linked too little sleep.
In this study the researchers found two weight control hormones, leptin and ghrelin, were associated with shorter sleep and may affect weight gain. What the research showed was people that slept an average of 6 hours or less a night, tended to have a much higher body mass index than people that got more hours, 9 hours or more. So it is very important to understand how does this all work? Yes, less sleep can cause weight gain; it can also lead to a weakened immune system, increased cancer risk, increased heart disease risk, and increased auto immune disease risk.

The key situation is when you do not get enough sleep, and enough sleep means as close to 9.5 hours as you can, but most critically at least 3.5 to 4 of those hours before midnight. This is what the body needs to balance balance the thyroid and the entire hormonal system. As this study showed what happens is, certain hormones goes out of balance, the leptin, which is associated with fullness and the ghrelin, which is associated with hunger, again these are part of the hormonal system. But, melatonin which is secreted by the pineal gland, this has to do with immunity, this also has to do with health, this is affected with sleep. The next one is pituitary, your master hormone gland, this is affected by sleep. And most critically your next one, your thyroid gland, is the one that is most critically affected by sleep after the melatonin secreted by the pineal gland. So your thyroid gland is your gland of metabolism. If your sleep is off, your metabolism will be off. In most cases, it will slow down and if your metabolism slows down, you much more easily gain weight.

So, one of the best ways to keep in the highest level of immune health, total body health, total emotional health, total mental health, is to get that 9.5 hours of sleep with at least 3.5 to 4 before midnight. Because remember, the 3.5 to 4 before midnight has a double affect on the body, a double affect.   So what are you going to do? You want to live the Seven Basic Steps to Total Health each and every day of your life. One of them is sleep which we have talked about. But there are six other very important steps that will help you maintain the ideal body weight or gain or regain your total health of body, mind and emotions.

Everyone experiences stress and many people are stressed every day. But, stress isn’t always obvious. In fact, some people don’t even realize how much stress they’re under until they suffer serious physical consequences of that stress.

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, some possible signs that you’re under too much stress are:

• Anxiety
• Back Pain
• Stiff neck
• Depression
• Fatigue
• Trouble Sleeping
• Unexpected Weight Changes
• headaches
• Relationship Troubles
• High Blood Pressure

Still, managing stress or reducing it as much as you can is a smart idea, because constant stress leaves your body flooded with stress hormones, which can increase your risk of heart attack and other serious health problems.

Stress causes physical and psychological reactions. It can alter your sleep.  Stress causes you do go into adrenaline mode or fight, flight, fright reactions that cause the immune system to be suppressed.

One way to destress is  with deep breathing. One minute per each hour of the day, you need to sit and do nothing but focus on breathing. This is your recharging.

Exercise is also very important, about 20 minutes 3-4 times per week.

Also very helpful is to write down your thoughts on paper or journal.
Write down your thoughts on paper so you can let things go.

Organization also helps destress yourself. Once you organize your life you can save easily 25% of your time.

Also it is very healing and very stress relieving to laugh and laugh deep.

–American Academy of Family Physician’s, HealthDay

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on how to relieve stress.
What this interesting article showed was some of the signs of stress, which are so varied you would have to have a list many, many pages long, but they did put some of the symptoms of stress in the body, but what I like is the 5 ways that the authors write how to decrease the stress. Let’s just briefly talk about them.

Number one is deep breathing. This is one of the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health, the deep diaphragm breathing. And as they say focus on the breathing and you get away from all the other distractions. This helps not only increased level of health by oxygenating the blood, and oxygen is one of the strongest ways to not only boost the level of health of the cells, but also no pathogens, bacteria, viruses, parasites, candida and cancer cells can live in a highly oxygenated environment. So deep diaphragm breathe, where you focus your mind on your breathing pattern, it fixes and stills the mind. Very powerful in the journey of following the heart as opposing to the mind and this is one of the most critical aspects of your total health.

The other thing she recommends is exercise. Of course, exercise as we always have stated, is another one of the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health, and it will definitely help destress the body. It gets the toxins out of the body; it increases the blood flow which brings the nutrients and oxygen into the body. It increases lymphatic movement which helps triple the white blood count when done with cellular lymphatic exercise and also it helps triple the movement of toxins out of the lymphatic system, which is where the majority of toxins flow through.   It’s the sewer system of the body. So critical is exercise in destressing.

The next thing that she writes is journaling. Journaling is basically putting your thoughts on paper and this is very important. Journaling is a way we can talk it out to ourselves and as she says, which we agree is a good way to release, to let go of things. So journaling is just writing each and every day, things that you don’t want to store in yourself. Another way of looking at journaling is, if you have a situation with a person, who has offended you or has done something to stress you out, you might not want to verbally address the person, but you could write them a letter, never meaning to send it, you can destroy the letter, but the fact of writing it out and expressing the emotion, giving your body the freedom to release that emotion, is very healing and very destressing.

Also she says getting organized. Time and time again, people stress themselves out because their lack of organization and time management. So, the example we’ve used before, if you have a million index cards and a different person’s name on each one of them, and they’re in a pile, how long will it take you to find the one that you’re looking for. It could take hours and hours. Now if those index cards were alphabetically filed, it would take you a matter of seconds to find what you were looking for. The more time we waste in our life due to our lack of organization and time management, the more stressed we will be.

Then lastly she says, learn to have a sense of humor and to make people to laugh and to make others laugh too. This is so critical in health and healing because it boosts the immune system when we laugh, it strengthens the immune system, it secretes all types of hormones that increase level of health in the body, it has been shown to actually reverse disease, and laughter does. It’s been shown on blood tests, the immune system response that laughter does bring. Laughter is just good medicine, it’s good for the heart and soul of a person. So let us learn to laugh in life. Remember in everything in life, we have a choice, no matter how bad a situation is, we have a choice, we can laugh about it or we can cry about it and laughter is always the healthier response.

Having a positive outlook makes life more enjoyable, and it may also lower blood pressure.

Among more than 2,500 people, the higher a person scored on a questionnaire measuring positive emotions, the lower was his or her blood pressure.

“Our thoughts and emotions do affect our physical processes,” said the study’s lead author. “The nice thing is that we have some control over that.”

There is evidence that positive emotions can help keep a person’s chemical and neural responses in balance, and help people handle stress better, according to researcher.

To investigate whether happiness might be related to blood pressure as well, they surveyed 2,654 people. About half were men and half were women. All of the subjects completed a questionnaire that ranked their degree of positive emotions on a scale of 0 to 12.

The higher a person scored on the test, the lower their blood pressure was, the researchers found. The findings suggest that targeting people’s emotional well-being could be an effective way to help control their blood pressure, researchers said.
– Psychosomatic Medicine

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on positive emotions can lower blood pressure.
What this study showed was very simply how mind affects body and actually we would like to say on the other side body affects mind. So what you do in the mental/emotional realm your affecting the physical and what you do in the physical realm is affecting the mental and emotional. So in this study, what they found was a higher person scored on the questionnaires ranking their degree of positive emotions on a scale from 0-12, the lower their blood pressure was. The the effect was strongest among people who weren’t taking drugs to lower their blood pressure. But it was still significant for men and women who were taking hypertensive medications. The study closes, says the findings suggest that targeting peoples emotional well being could be an effective way to control their blood pressure. Of course it can. We see this time and time again. It says it in the Word, a merry heart does good like medicine. So, what we’re finding is when we have positive emotions and again, emotions can be questionable because you can be happy one day and sad the next. So that would be a lower blood pressure on the happy days and a higher blood pressure on the sad days.

What’s more powerful than that, is to walk in spiritual states of being which are joy, peace, and love and hope. These are not swayed by the environment or the situations. These are deep within you. These are part of your being when you have covenanted with the living God. When you’ve entered the marriage relationship with the living God. So, when we walk in that relationship we walk in a deep inner peace, joy, love and hope that is not swayed by anything. That is the foundation of total health. Because that affects the mind which affects the body. So I will say it again, not only does what you do to the mind affect the body, and the body to the mind.

But what you do in the spiritual realm when you walk in His love, joy, peace and hope, that affects the mind and body most powerfully of all. So, how can we walk in this? First and foremost we have to enter the covenant relationship. We have to say I Do, to the marriage call of the heart instead of the call of the mind, the old lie filled, ego filled, world filled, flesh filled mind. But we have to say I Do to the heart. The heart is where God speaks the truth. It’s where He puts the passion and compassion, and the drive and the purpose of your life in. How do you know it’s the purpose of your life and that He put it there and it’s not just a product of your mind? Because you have nothing to gain and everything to lose in it, but you still must go forward in it because it is in your heart. This is the key. So, remember, to walk in the highest level of total health you want to balance yourselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. Because what we do to one, we do to the other parts. After entering the covenant relationship with the living God we want to live the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health each and every day of life.

A loving, supportive family can be enough to override a genetic vulnerability to depression, new research suggests.

Studies have found that people who carry a “short” version of the serotonin transporter gene — known as 5-HTTLPR — tend to be more susceptible to depression than people without this gene variant.

But the new findings, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, show that to be true only of gene carriers who grew up in a stressful home environment. In contrast, the investigators found that young adult gene carriers whose families were warm and supportive had a reduced risk of depression.

The findings point to the importance of nurture, and not only nature, in the development of depression, according to the study authors.
“A strong family life can be enough to reverse the effects of this risk factor,” said lead author Dr. Shelley E. Taylor, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the other hand, a dysfunctional family life may create the stress that sends genetically vulnerable people into depression, the study findings suggest.

Among study participants who said they grew up with a warm, nurturing family, carriers of two copies of the short gene variant had a lower risk of depression.

This suggests that the short form of 5-HTTLPR is “highly responsive to environmental influence,” the researchers point out.
Importantly, none of the study participants who grew up in dysfunctional families reported physical or sexual abuse. Instead, the problems were milder, including “moderate” degrees of conflict and unaffectionate or “distant” relationships among family members.

The implication is that even relatively mild family dysfunction can raise a vulnerable young person’s risk of depression.

Still, people with a family history of depression should know that “genes are not destiny,” according to the study authors. Having a “strong support system that can see you through the tough times,” Taylor said, may make the difference.
– Biological Psychiatry via UCLA

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemecs comments on good early family life may counter depression gene.
Wonderful thing in this study was very simply they found that people could have the predisposition to depression in a genetic trait but they showed that it only manifested in the genes of those who grew up in a stressful home environment in contrast they found that they ones that grew up in warm and loving and supporting families had a reduced risk of depression. The beautiful thing of this was the importance of nurture and not only nature and development or depression. You can put this in development of all genetically related disease. So what is nurture and what is nature? Nurture is the environment that is made can actually change the manifestations of the genes and this is the new field of epigenetics that has emerged. “Epi” meaning above or beyond the genes. The something beyond the genes themselves is the environment the genes are put in that will determine their manifestation.

Nature on the other hand, is what you’re born with. That’s your blueprint, your genetic code, what you have. So, if heart disease runs in a family line, it does not mean that you have to end up with heart disease just because your father had it, your mother had it, your grandfather had, your brother and sisters have it. It means the genetic trait is there. But you can change the environment by living the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health everyday, each and every day of your life. You can go deeper and deeper into healing the root of these things and then you will fully see the power of nurture, which means changing the environment. Not only the mental/emotional environment which this study showed, but the physical environment. Eating pure food, drinking pure water, getting the right amount of exercise, getting the right amount of sleep, and making sure that you deep diaphragm breath.

Live a life of fasting and detoxification, prayer, meditation and stillness. All these things are on the nurture side and can change the environment that can actually heal and reverse the likelihood of disease and reverse the predisposition of this gene of heart disease from manifesting. So, very important to understand that the genes our not our destiny as the end of the article showed. I want to say that again, Genes our not our destiny. Your destiny is what is in your heart when you walk it out fully and you walk it out with perseverance, never quitting, stopping or giving up on what God has put into your heart. This is the key to total health, this is the key to living a total health lifestyle and being all that God has called you to be in body, mind and spirit.