AMEN 2014: Joined Together

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Breakout Sessions C

Zeno Charles-Marcel

Epigenetics

Let's start with a word of prayer, please.

Our Father in heaven, indeed we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And so, at this time, as we learn a little bit more about how you have put things together.

We ask that you would open our minds so we can see your fingerprints all over this topic.

How many of you have studied something about epigenetics before?

Well then, I guess I might be redundant because we're gonna be talking about epigenetics, but let's see how we can deal with this.

I have no conflicts of interest and nothing to disclose, so you don't have to be quiet about anything here, right?

And what we're going to do is more or less talk about things in this manner.

As, as Seventh-day Adventists, as clinicians, as, as people, We're called to reason from cause to effect, and epigenetics actually stresses us as we try to stretch into understanding how things get transmitted from 1 generation to another to another to another, as you were hearing before.

Epigenetics involves the regulation of gene activity and the expression without the alteration of gene sequences.

And we're going to do a little bit of kind of basic genetics, and then we'll talk about epigenetics in detail.

We also have something called nutri-epigenetics and microbial epigenetics, and these things show that we have some interaction between not only our own cells and the food and the environment, but also a large internal environment that we have called the gut.

We have about 10 times as many gut microbes as we have cells in our bodies.

And then we have complex diseases like type 2 diabetes, asthma, some addictions, schizophrenia, inflammatory bowel disease.

All of these things show that there's some interaction, right, between environmental factors and epigenetic regulation.

Now, obviously, 1 of my biggest challenges was how to distill things down just so it'll fit into about 50 minutes, okay?

So, let's see if I was successful or if God was good in leading me to which things I need to talk about.

Epigenetics and the complementary complex, concepts of metabolic imprinting or metabolic programming provide a compelling model for how environmental influences, how environment influences us through development of lifelong and lifelong health and health practices, how these things can interact.

There's a definite interplay between epigenomics and the human microbiome, and from conception to the first 1, 000 days of life has become now, according to the latest science, that's the very crucial period for things to happen in someone's life.

However, as you will see and as you know already and you heard from the last talk, these things are not set in stone, right?

The good news about epigenetics is that things can be changed, and we're not just a product of our genes.

We can actually influence how the genes are expressed, and we can actually influence the genes themselves, even though we're not going to talk much about the influencing of genes per se.

Councils of Parents and Teachers says, The Lord bids us to reason from cause to effect, to remember that we are his property, and to unite with him in keeping the body pure and holy.

And that parents should teach their children to reason from cause to effect.

And parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have a part to play in the next and the next and the next generations if time should last.

What do you think the picture represents?

You're supposed to see an old man's head, okay?

And depending upon the resolution of the projector, you may or may not see all of the things that are there.

I put this up because on the surface, this is supposed to represent a man.

That's supposed to be his nose, his mustache, his beard.

He's obviously military, and that's supposed to be his right hand with his fingers on his chest.

It's actually a man in here, an older fellow with a hat and a beard.

These are his legs and those are his pants.

And this is a woman over here and this is her skirt.

She has something in her arms, maybe a baby.

And there's some hay or something like that in the background there.

And this is the entrance of a portico going inside.

This is the street, cobblestone type street, and that's a dog that's lying there sleeping.

Now, why I put this up is because depending on how you look at things and how in depth you look at things, you can see more and more and more.

And for years, the idea was that our genes were these very deterministic types of things that were passed on very rigidly from 1 generation to the other.

And the history of this, as you may or may not know, when Gregor Mendel was first talking about this, people didn't believe that anyway.

And just before his death, there were some papers that were published.

And all of a sudden, this became the going idea.

As a matter of fact, it even lasted up to about 20 years ago.

People believed that Mendelian inheritance or some form of neo-Mendelian inheritance was the way things were.

However, in 1940, 1 doctor looked at what was going on with the X chromosomes.

He looked at what was happening with the X chromosomes and recognized that women have X chromosomes, too.

I don't see anybody here being surprised about that.

And if women have X chromosomes, how come those X chromosomes don't do anything for the women but they do so much for the men.

So we'll have to look and see how our current thinking is.

And we always have to talk in terms of current thinking, because tomorrow something else will be discovered, like in this picture.

There's something else that we don't see.

And God's painting of his creation, we're told we're going to learn about this, how long?

So there's more to see even than what we're going to see now.

Now, over the last 14 years or so, there's been a very interesting incline in the amount of publications dealing with epigenetics.

This was published in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News in 2013.

Lots of interest, lots of, you know, it's so interesting when something becomes in vogue, everybody wants to know something, everybody wants to do something with it.

So there's a lot of research, a lot of funding going into this.

And of course, people are looking for ways, not just to find out how things are, but actually looking for ways that they can exploit for therapy and things like that, and especially for the development of, you know what, right, drugs, okay?

How can we develop some drug that will solve some other problem that we have.

Time magazine put out this issue saying that epigenetics, DNA isn't everything.

There's something beyond genetics, and we're going to see what that is.

The new science of epigenetics reveals how your choices you make can change your genes and those of your kids.

And they went on to say, you are what your grandmother ate.

But I had to add, and your mother, what your mother ate, okay?

And your grandfather, what your grandfather ate.

And even your father, what your father ate?

And as you are aware, chromosomes are actually quite long and coiled up into what we would call those chromosomes that we see during mitosis or meiosis.

When I was in medical school, when the first was DIRT, That's how long ago I was in medical school.

Lisa Walke

Christian Witness in a non-Adventist Work Environment

As you've probably heard by now, I'm 1 of the board members of AMEN.

I'm the clinical chief of geriatrics at Yale School of Medicine.

And I have been coming to AMEN conferences for the past 10 years and as a person, and I'll show you as a person who's not at an Adventist place, I've had this passion for trying to reach out to those of us who are practicing in non-Adventist work environments.

And so today I'm going to be talking about Christian witness in a non-eventist work environment.

I have no disclosures, personal, financial, or personal.

The other disclosure is that I don't have all the answers, which is why we're doing it in this format of having a workshop and a discussion.

So my objectives, which are a little bit different than what's in the brochure, so I added a few more.

So we're going to review the statistics about religion and spirituality in the United States, discuss some strategies to incorporate spiritual history in our clinical care, discuss the real and perceived challenges of witnessing in non-eventus settings, and then have a facilitated discussion, but we'll be discussing along the way here as well, about best practices for sharing Christ in the workplace.

You know, we're always looking for best practices in clinical care, so what are some best practices that we can have in our how we share Christ in our workplace.

So first I'll tell you just a little bit about my story and then we're gonna start talking so you have a sense of where I'm coming from and why I'm interested in this topic.

My parents came to this country about 2 years before I was born, and they were Moravian in Barbados.

And so when they moved to the United States and then I was born, it was time for me to get christened, and there was no Moravian church nearby.

So I got christened in, you can't see, unfortunately as well as I would like, I got christened in a Methodist church.

Then I went to grammar school at Redeemer Lutheran.

So it was both a church and a school and basically the way it looked is the church was here and then you would go around that way to the school and so I went there for 8 years of grammar school.

I was confirmed Lutheran so that was my upbringing grammar school.

Francis Preparatory School, which is a Catholic prep school for a high school.

This is all basically in my area where I grew up, so it was a three-minute ride from my house to my prep school.

And so as you can see, thus far along, I've had influences with being Moravian with my parents, Methodist that I was christened.

I was raised Lutheran, went to Catholic high school, and then I went to college.

And so I lived in this dorm here, which is called Hullworthy.

And as you can see, the center part of Harvard is Memorial Church.

And at 10 minutes to 8 every day, the bells go off in the bell timer for morning prayers.

So all the freshmen live in Harvard Yard and everyone can hear when it's time for morning prayers because we're all supposed to go to morning prayers, although they're optional.

So that was where I spent most of my kind of formative years at college.

Then after I came back to New York, I went to medical school at Mount Sinai, so I had another religious tradition now of being exposed to Judaism.

And then I also did my residency at Montefiore, which is also a Jewish medical center, So I had another set of influences.

And then I came to Yale to do my fellowship in geriatric medicine, and that's why I've stayed for faculty since then.

So again, I show you this just to show I feel that I've been fortunate to have an exposure to a lot of different religious backgrounds and traditions through my own personal experience and therefore it helps me kind of have some discussions with people because I have a better understanding of some of the religious tenets that people may ascribe to.

So for me some lessons learned were that many secular academic institutions have a religious component or a religious background.

So Harvard, if you didn't know, was started as a college for ministers.

And so the crest for Harvard right here, which is Veritas, Christo, and Ecclesiastes, which that was the original 1.

Now it's been simplified to just Veritas, just truth, but you can see the religious background.

And so that's true for a lot of the schools, again, that I'm familiar with in the Ivy League.

So Lux in Veritas, which is the symbol for Yale, light and truth.

Yale was formed as Yale was formed in response to the liberalism of Harvard.

So a lot of things at Yale are trying to kind of contrast what was at Harvard.

But as you can see, it's written in Hebrew in the middle, because Eli Yale was a study of Hebrew and liked Hebrew and Judaism.

And so there's a strong Jewish component at Yale.

Princeton in there, at the top in Latin, says, New and Old Testament, and then she thrives under the watch of God.

So a lot of the schools, again now most of us don't speak Latin, but a lot of the schools do have this background.

Columbia has, By your light we shall see.

And that's the thought where we get on our money, in God we trust, because a lot of the people that dealt with the money originally were from Rhode Island.

And so, again, seeing that we've had a lot of traditions within secular places that still have a religious background, religious training.

And so part of what I want to talk about today is what Sister Dirksen started to bring out, that there are a lot of different ways that we can share it with our witness.

It doesn't always have to be praying, but certainly we do want to pray with our patients.

It may be having that listening ear, like they were saying, the clear model, kind of acknowledging what's going on.

It may be just having a pleasant word to say that day.

Every Monday that's a topic of conversation and just by saying I went to church on Saturday someone's always like, Saturday?

Like no, I went to church on Saturday and that generates a conversation right there.

So there are a lot of easy ways that you can even just start having conversations with whatever level you're comfortable with at that particular point in time.

And so, so that's what we're going to talk about as well.

We Yellow Haven Hospital is across the street from my office, makes it very convenient.

I attend 2 months of the year and the rest of the time I do mostly academics and administrative work.

And so about 2 years ago we purchased the local community hospital, so we acquired the local community hospital.

So now we have 2 campuses of the 1 hospital.

As they like to say, 2 locations but 1 destination, or something like that.

Mayfield's campus, because that used to be St.

So a hospital within the Catholic tradition.

And my unit is being moved to this hospital next week as I speak.

But when you come in the main entrance, then this is what you see.

So when you come in, the main entrance is over here.

Then you see right there's the healing ministry of Christ and it's the pool of slum and I tried to take a picture head on but it didn't come out so well but this is a close up and so it was commissioned back in 1988 it goes through the whole story So if someone's not familiar with the story, and that's the entrance when you come in.

The hospital has a lot of stained glass windows.

1 quarter has all of the passion of Christ, you know, the whole steps to the cross.

The sisters are charity with the sister group that helps support.

So we have parish nurses in the hospital.

Part of the contract with Yale purchasing the hospital, the Pope had to agree because it's a Catholic hospital, It has to go to the Pope, and he did, obviously, because we were able to purchase it, but each room still has to have a crucifix.

There are morning prayers every morning on the campus, and so even though it's now part of Yale New Haven Hospital, part of the negotiations were they had to keep their Catholic tradition, right, and still following the Catholic traditions in the hospital.

So it's gonna be a different setting for me to work in as well compared to what we do on the other side of the street.

As I was showing you before with the FICA, which is 1 way of doing it, This is part of what we ask in our questionnaire.

Tim Howe

Lyn Howe

The Husband and Wife Team in Health Ministry

I'd like to start on time and it's even better to start early, so let's bow our heads.

Our Father, we are certainly thankful that we are here together and know that you are here as well, as you've promised.

We pray that as we spend this time together, our thoughts will be turned to you, and that you will teach us more about how to work together.

Well, for those of you who don't know us, this is my wife Lynn.

And she and I have been together now for almost 35 years.

And this past year was the best 1 yet, I think.

So first I thought I would share a few quotes with you.

From the faith I live by on the home, the mission of the home extends beyond its own members.

Now those of you who are physicians or those of you who aren't may have read in Ministry of Healing the chapter of the physician and educator.

It says the duty of the physician extends beyond his own patients to the community.

And now we read that the mission of the home extends beyond its own members.

So it's not just the people in your house that your mission is to.

The object of the Christian home, the Christian home is to be an object lesson illustrating the 2 principles of life.

Far more powerful than any sermon that can be preached is the influence of a true home upon human hearts and lives.

Then You've got to get the home right, right?

Think of all the sermons that can be preached, and this says far more powerful is the influence of a Christian home.

But you think, well, I've got to have this home and I've got to have it right and it's got to be this and it's got to be that.

It says, a lamp, however small, if kept steadily burning, may be the means of lighting other lamps.

Our sphere of influence may seem narrow, yet wonderful possibilities are ours through the faithful use of our own homes.

You know, sometimes you may be tempted to think, well, if I had a bigger house or if I had a smaller house or if I had this or if I had that.

Remember, it's the small lamp kept steadily burning.

But then how about those of us who aren't married or who don't have that ideal setting?

If you're all alone, you still have God the Father.

You still have Jesus, your elder brother.

We can never put forth the least effort for the advancement of the work of God in our world, but the act thrills through all the universe of heaven and makes us co-laborers with God, united with the heavenly principalities and powers.

We're always, as God's children, in family.

And that's 1 thing that I wanted to make completely clear.

If I have to be able to speak, because, you know, there may be some people who will listen to this on audio version day.

I just want to make certain to be very clear in explaining that the principles that we're talking about are for anyone and for all of us because, you know, maybe we may be in a very happy marriage, but we may have to present something on our own at some time, or we may be separated from family, or there can be a whole host of times when we may be alone, but we are never alone.

With our Heavenly Father with us, we always have his love, his care, his wisdom, his strength to stand beside us and to help us, and to give us the right words, to give us the help and the help that we need.

And as I've thought about this, 1 example that is really meaningful to me is Corrie 10 Boom.

And you think of Corrie, you know, she shared her life, she shared the stories from her family and from her experiences in prison, and universities, to very educated people, to prisoners in Uganda jails.

But wherever it was, she was able to share from her own personal experience and that sharing was able to kind of create a sense of family in the people that were listening to her so that the people were able to say, yes, you know, Cory's God is a real God and I can believe in him too.

So whatever your situation, as a Christian, you have home to share.

You have your home with your Heavenly Father, with Jesus your brother, and you have your heavenly home that you're looking forward to, as well as your Christian family.

So no 1 should feel excluded from the ability to share home and to share together.

There are several principles of working together, both in the home and if you're out of the home, presenting that we'd like to share with you.

They're simple principles, but I think they'll be helpful to you as they have been to us.

The first of them is thinking about opening your home to other people.

I would encourage you to remember the phases of life.

When you are just married, you may do things a little differently than when you've been married for a few years.

And you may do things a little bit differently when you have children than when your children are grown and gone.

I wouldn't encourage you when you're first married, those first months, that first year, to open your home and invite lots of people over.

Even in scripture, you can read in Deuteronomy how when a man was first married, he was excused from all duties of war for the first year.

There were certain things that God saw fit to convey upon a family that was just married.

And I think that at that stage, your mission is each other.

You may have heard tragic stories about families with all the best intentions that had little children and they had people come and stay with them.

When you have little children, yes, you may open your home, but be very careful.

And yes, there are angels that are strong and can protect us.

Never fail to ask for the protection of your children.

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Series

Breakout Sessions C

Epigenetics

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Epigenetics

1h

Christian Witness in a non-Adventist Work Environment

26m

The Husband and Wife Team in Health Ministry

46m

Choosing a Specialty and Finding a Residency

57m

Sound Doctrine