Fight for Your Life

The Body's Blood

Blood is vital. So much so that Leviticus 17:11 refers to it as containing "the life of the body." Within the blood are millions of red and white cells, plasma, and platelets, all with specific jobs. Those jobs range from carrying oxygen and nutrients to the lungs, tissues, and organs, to carrying away waste and toxins, to fighting infection as part of your immune system. Without blood, you simply could not live. Just as without the shedding of the blood of the Messiah, we could not experience salvation that leads to everlasting life. As it is in the natural, so it is in the spiritual.

Glucose

Though the spiritual concept of blood is fascinating, this episode focuses heavily on the physical aspect, specifically blood sugar, or glucose. Glucose is the main sugar found in the blood, which is the body's primary source of energy. It predominantly comes from the food you eat which is broken down into glucose and carried to the cells through the bloodstream.

Low blood sugar may cause you to become hungry, weak, dizzy, or irritable. Elevated blood sugar levels may cause an immediate increase in cravings for sweets, chronic fatigue, brain fog, and inflammation. According to the National Institutes of Health, three out of every five people worldwide will die due to an inflammation-related disease. Food substances such as sugar, processed foods, gluten, grains, artificial flavorings, processed vegetable oils, and conventional meat products have been found to increase pain, inflammation, and the risk of health issues. These substances are also more likely to trigger anxiety, the most common mental illness in the United States. A lifestyle of consistent spiked glucose can lead to faster aging, hormonal imbalances, and metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Glucose is a monumental key to mental health due to the fact that what you eat can directly affect your mood. Fluctuations in blood sugar, both high and low, are associated with rapid mood swings and feelings of anger, anxiety or nervousness, frustration, sadness, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating. Because we pay so little attention to our bodies, we dismiss these undesirable feelings, or symptoms, and look for ways to alleviate them rather than tend to them as our body's cry for help.

Gut Health

Your gut health also aids in controlling your mood. The gastrointestinal system sends signals to the central nervous system that then triggers mood changes. Researchers are discovering the gut to be like a "little brain," or "second brain." The nerves that line the gastrointestinal tract from esophagus to rectum are known as the enteric nervous system. Digestion, mood, health, and the way you think are all related to your gut health. Essentially, the gut speaks, and the brain listens through various nerves, one of the main being the vagus nerve.

Bad bacteria in the gut can be caused by poor diet, too much or too little sleep, lack of exercise, age, and medications. Signs of an unhealthy gut microbiome include digestive issues such as bloating or gas, low mood or high stress, and sleep disturbances and fatigue. An unhealthy gut microbiome can hinder weight loss and lead to diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Chron's disease.

More than 40% of the world has been reported to have bad gut health. 60-70 million Americans have been diagnosed with gastrointestinal (GI) diseases as of 2022. High stress levels, sedentary lifestyles, and diets consisting of mainly processed foods play a huge factor in these rising numbers. The good news is God has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness according to 2 Peter 1:3, and He doesn't just mean spiritually. Believe it or not, God wants you to have a healthy diet, and a healthy temple.

You can improve your gut health by making small daily lifestyle changes such as implementing pre- and probiotics, adjusting your sleep schedule, and adding exercise to your daily routine. Eating foods such as oily fish and fermented foods can promote healing in the gut and ultimately improve your mental health. Because "go with your gut" is such a common practice, it's important to make sure your gut is healthy before following the instincts you feel from it.

What is in the house?

Stephen moves into the second topic by posing the questions, "When you think of home, what do you think of? What feeling greets you?" Is it anxiety, chaos, distraction, or argument? Or is it a sense of peace, warmth, love, and comfort? Are you paying attention to how you feel when you're at home? For some, it's the one place we can't wait to get to after a long day at work or being out and about. For others, it may be a place you avoid like the plague, looking for any and every reason to escape and spend as little of your time there as possible.

Ultimately, whatever feeling you experience in your home is likely leaking out of you, only you don't realize it due to a lack of self-awareness. Everything you feel in your home is stemming from your own personal paradigm, the way in which you see things. It's likely you feel unhappy at home because you're constantly finding things to complain about. If you want to experience happiness, shift your perspective, and complain less. Instead of becoming upset about dirty dishes, be thankful for the people in the home that God has allowed you to share the meal with.

If your house is peaceful, comfortable, warm, relaxing, and full of laughter and love, amen! If not, recognize the source of the problem and realize there is more than one solution. Though sometimes the solution is best sought from someone with an outside view of the problem. If the home is tense, distracting, and full of negativity, the methods needs to change. The methods of communication, organization, and self-awareness are the most likely to need attention. Because methods can indicate desire, it's important to study self and discover your own desires, wether they be self-based or community-based. Perhaps you lack organization which causes stress and distraction because you don't like cleaning. Or maybe you lack communication with those in your home because you're more focused on your own wants and needs rather than the needs and wants of the household. Essentially, everything leads back to your perspective. Change your perspective and you change the atmosphere of the home.

Supervision vs. Supervisor

Stephen concludes the episode with a quick discussion on the difference between a supervisor and supervision. In essence, a supervisor is someone with superior vision than the one needing to be supervised, or observed, monitored, and taught. As parents, we are all supervisors of our children. We provide the correction and instruction needed for them to learn and grow into functional adults in society. However, as adults, who supervises us? Especially those of us who have lost one or both parents. How do we supervise ourselves when a supervisor is one with superior vision than us?

We need someone to help us out. An elder, a life coach, a weightless coach, a pastor, or guidance counselor can be highly beneficial in helping you to develop solutions for the problems you can't seem to figure out on your own. I truly believe that everybody needs somebody, somebody to speak wisdom into our lives when we're being stubborn or stuck in self-denial. We need someone to tell us when we haven't changed and are continuing to walk in the wilderness rather than learning from our mistakes. Though we may be adults, we're all still children in desperate need of instruction and wisdom to live a purposeful, mentally, spiritually, and physically stable life. After all, as Hosea 4:6 says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..."

Something Has to Change

The "something" that has to change is what we put in our mouths. Stephen said it perfectly when he related each of us to Esau, selling our birthrights of peace and happiness for a bowl of soup, or in our case, sugar and processed foods. We sacrifice our own mental and physical health for fleeting pleasure of a tasty meal, though it has no real nutritional value, which proves us to be pleasure seekers as discussed in Episode 25. Begin to monitor your food intake and your blood glucose. A normal fasting blood glucose concentration should be between 70 mg/dL and 100 mg/dL. A concentration between 100 mg/dL and 125 mg/dL is considered high and pre-diabetic while anything over 125 mg/dL is considered diabetes.

What also has to change is the vibes we carry. Whether you realize it or not, you're giving off a very evident frequency. When that frequency is off, everyone around you can feel it, especially those closest to you, the ones in your own home. Fight for your own peace and happiness, and extend that peace and happiness to others, both inside and outside of your home.

2 Takeaways:

1. Start to track your blood sugar levels.

2. Change the vibrations inside of you and you will change the vibe of your house.

Contemporary Speaks continues to intrigue its audience by discussing topics relating to both mental and physical health. The host, Stephen, dives into the twenty-sixth episode of Something Has to Change with a discussion on the importance of blood and its vital role as the life of the body. He then prompts the listener to reflect on the atmosphere of one's personal home and whether or not it is a place of tranquility, or a dwelling place for all things chaotic, stressful, and draining. With each topic, Stephen excellently connects the natural to the spiritual, aligning science with Scripture.

Want to dive deeper?

Watch the full episode