<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written Canada

Chris Holland

Overcoming Addiction

God's book, the Bible, still relevant in today's complex world.

It is written, sharing messages of hope around the world.

Thank you so much for watching It Is Written.

Today we're going to be touching on a topic that addresses a problem that everyone has, and that is the problem of addictions.

Whether those addictions are little things or big things, we'll be talking about them in this program.

Joining me in studio to help with this discussion is Dr.

Nedley, thank you so much for joining me today to discuss this topic.

Thank you, it's great to be here again, Chris.

Nedley is well known to many of you in our audience as he and I did a program called Depression The Way Out, a series of programs that touched the lives of many across Canada.

Now, if you haven't seen that series or you'd like to obtain that series, you can go to our website.

It is written Canada.ca and there you can find our program archives or you can even purchase the DVD set.

Nedley is a physician of 27 years in internal medicine with a specialty in mental disorders, gastroenterology, and the hard to diagnose patient.

Nedley, I mentioned those things, and we've talked about this in a previous show, but how do you specialize in mental disorders and gastroenterology?

Well, it turns out that if you were to, at surgery, you know, the belly is opened up and we can see all this plexus of nerves.

If we were to scrape off all of those nerves from the gastrointestinal tract, it would weigh 4 times as much as the entire spinal cord.

And so there's quite a brain-GI connection.

And it's amazing how many times when we clear up the brain we clear up the gastrointestinal problems as well.

Nedley you are the president of Weimar Institute and maybe just briefly share with our audience what is Weimar Institute?

Weimar Institute is an institute of higher education.

We have a college there where you can take pre-med and nursing and theology, health of body, mind and soul, the things that are related to that are taught there.

But we also have a new start program where people come with diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, a lot of physical diseases that can be improved through nutrition and lifestyle, even cancer, and come through our program for 12 to 19 days.

It's world renowned, people from all over the world come to Weimar to get help in those areas.

And now we also have a depression and anxiety recovery program there as well.

Nedley, if someone was interested in getting more information about the educational institution or the New Start program or the depression recovery program, where might they find that information?

The educational institute at weimar.edu, the New Start program at newstart.com, and then the depression and anxiety recovery program is depressionthewayout.com.

Nedley, you have helped hundreds and hundreds, thousands really of patients with mental health.

As you look at your patients and as you start addressing the issue of mental health with people, what is 1 of the major problems that people with mental health challenges face?

Well, an addiction is something that you go back to that's harming you.

And really the 1 characteristic that's present in all addictions is they actually suppress the frontal lobe of the brain.

It is the area of our analytical ability.

It's the spiritual area, the worshipful area of the brain.

And every addiction has that 1 thing in common, suppression of the frontal lobe.

And we've talked a lot about the frontal lobe.

And again, I would encourage our viewer to go watch that series, Depression the Way Out.

It's not just for someone who's depressed, not just someone who's anxious, but actually has plenty of information for generally good mental health.

And so we talk extensively about the frontal lobe, but let's just dwell there for a moment.

The frontal lobe is actually a very large lobe in human beings, much larger than it is in any other animal species by far.

33 to up to 38% of our human brain is in the frontal lobe.

And that actually helps us to accomplish advanced planning and thinking.

It's where spirituality, morality, the will is centered.

Higher forms of math require the frontal lobe.

Interpretation of Proverbs requires the frontal lobe.

And so we utilize the frontal lobe, actually, to be successful in life.

Okay, now you said that the human brain, about 38% of the human brain is the frontal lobe.

Just to give some perspective, how large is the frontal lobe in some animals like cats or dogs?

The most in any animal species is chimpanzees, 17%.

And then we're way up there at 33 to 38%.

Okay, so now, we'll just go back to that just a little bit.

This is why dogs are far more lovable creatures, right?

Well they actually are able to exhibit more empathy.

By the way, that's something else the frontal lobe does.

And so, you know, cats love torturing their victims to death.

That's because they don't have the empathy capability.

And any human being that enjoys torture, it's a sign of serious frontal lobe compromise.

You can't enjoy it unless your frontal lobes are way compromised.

Okay, so addictions affect the frontal lobe.

Frontal lobe, key piece in having critical Thinking analytical thinking good judgment.

How big of a problem is the issue of addictions?

Unfortunately, it's a problem that's increasing Our society is filled with fun things to do, and many of those fun things are actually addictive.

So we are seeing addictions at an all-time worldwide rate that has been higher than ever before in human history.

So addictions that are at an all-time high all around the world, what are some addictions that we might think about here for the next few moments?

Okay, now I want to pause there for just a minute.

You talk about alcohol, and that is probably obvious to many people.

Nicotine is also probably obvious to many people.

Very difficult to stop drinking, or many people find it difficult to stop drinking, or difficult to stop smoking.

For that person who's sitting there right now saying, it is difficult, you just hang on, stay with the program, we're gonna talk about how to overcome that.

Nedley, I have heard from many people that marijuana, in fact, is not addictive.

It suppresses the frontal lobe, and it is addictive.

And there's reason why people tend to seek for it.

And they'll lose motivation for almost everything else except for the seeking of marijuana.

We've had people come through our program, they're heavy marijuana users, but they'll have nausea, vomiting, severe withdrawal symptoms for days coming off of marijuana.

So it's just a false statement that it's not addictive.

Back to Menu

Overcoming Addiction

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine