GYC West 2015: Saved to Serve

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GYC West

Personal Health

Neeta Hillman

How to Maximize Your Personal Health to Be Effective in Ministry Long-Term

I currently work at Wildwood Lifestyle Center and Hospital in Georgia.

I was actually working here at Weimar for the last 3 years.

My husband and I just moved in April over to Wildwood.

And I'm an internal medicine physician, board certified in internal medicine, working in both as a hospitalist, meaning that if you're sick enough to have to be admitted to the hospital, then I take care of you there, and I also do lifestyle medicine, so both outpatient, people that want to change their lifestyle, and then additionally inpatient lifestyle programs such as what they have here, 11, 18 and 25 day programs where people come, live and want to learn how to turn around their lifestyle.

Oftentimes because they are trying to reverse some kind of disease that they have.

Actually, yeah, I had brought water and I don't know what I did with it.

So the series that we're going to do is on personal health.

How do you maximize your personal health so you can be effective in ministry long-term?

That's the overall topic that we're doing.

The lecture right now, it's actually going to be 2 parts.

We're going to do 1 and a half parts in the first hour and then we'll do the rest of that in the second hour.

And the topic that we're first going to cover are nutrition pitfalls because there are a lot of things out there, information about diets and nutrition and what works and what doesn't work.

And we're just gonna look at the evidence and the science behind it.

And then that's the first 2 things in the morning.

The afternoon sessions are gonna be looking at exercise.

That's 1 of those things that is, it's very challenging, especially if you haven't exercised for a long time and you're trying to get back into an exercise program.

How to do it, what's the most effective way to do it, what are the things that are found to be the most effective.

But then additionally, why it is that exercise seems to be 1 of the first things to drop when our lives get busy because we're finding that increasingly, actually among the populations I've taken care of in the last 4 years, I've taken care of a lot of people who have been in ministry for a long time and you know This is 1 of the most consistent aspects that actually seems to be falling short.

And once it's put into place, people are actually able to overcome a lot of the issues and the challenges, the health problems that they had.

So we're going to talk about exercise in the afternoon.

Anxiety is actually 1 of those things that is plaguing a lot of young professionals and older professionals in our church and ministry, and we're finding that people are cutting short their ministry effectiveness and time because of the fact that we don't have effective tools for being able to deal with anxiety and we're going to look at both inspiration and evidence concerning that.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about, Tomorrow we're going to do overcoming addictions, specifically talking about appetite addictions, and then how they're related to some of the other addictions that many of us may have.

The fourth and final topic will be if you're living a busy life, you're a mom, you're a dad, you're a person in ministry, you are a professional, you are overseas, you have multiple responsibilities, whatever that may be, and you find that you don't have time to be healthy.

Over the last 4 years, 1 of the things that has been really a burden on my heart is trying to figure out how to help people to keep their health intact so that they can be functional in ministry for a long time.

So we're going to look at just practical tips, things that people have found that have been able to help them do this long term.

So those are the topics and again the first topics that we're looking at are nutrition and actually the spell out again.

Why don't I go ahead and start with a word of prayer.

Let me just quickly, can I just ask in general where everybody is in life?

And then How many are out and working right now?

And then how many are enjoying the blessings of retirement now?

And some of you guys are probably busier than some of us in the environment than that are working.

It gives me kind of an idea of what we're looking, how to tailor this for you all.

Why don't I go ahead and start with the word of prayer and then we'll go.

Father in heaven, we just want to thank you so much for the privilege of being able to come together and to learn about the principles of nutrition and how we can apply them.

Most importantly, we're just asking you to please help each of us to know and to learn what these principles are so that we can apply them to our lifestyle.

And I pray that you would teach us what it is that we may be missing or that we could add or improve or even just tips and ways to be able to take what we've learned and be able to help others.

We thank you again for this in Jesus name we pray.

Everyone's looking at me probably thinking I thought we were going to talk about nutrition.

What on earth does fasting have to do with this?

The reason that I looked at this as fasting is how many of you have done probably in the last let's say year, 2 years, how many of you have done a fast of some kind?

So about, you'll probably find about 2, 3 people will do a fast or what about, There's another word that people will use a cleanse how many people have done like a cleanse or something in the last 2 3 years Or so okay.

These are very common and popular terms that are used and let me ask you this why why?

I frequently ask people this, especially when we're talking about fasting.

What prompted you to do a fast or a cleanse?

I watched that show, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.

And I just thought it was neat how it really helped cure a lot of these diseases and stuff.

And I thought I'd do it for a couple days.

And since then, if I overdo it on food, then I'll fast after and I get back to normally.

So kind of just repeating what you were talking about.

Many of us have been in those places, maybe where we haven't eaten as well, and we haven't taken care of our body as well.

And just like you were talking about in the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, the guy went and I believe he did a juice fast, I can't remember exactly but he did a juice fast for a period of time essentially to try to get rid of what they would call toxins or things in their body that had accumulated because of bad lifestyle over a period of time, okay?

So yeah, that's very very common in fact, and then you mentioned also that when you start to notice you're headed back the other direction, then you kind of go back on to a fast again to be able to to get to reset things, okay?

Any other thoughts on why people, why do you think people fast?

What are other reasons that you've seen for people fasting for a period of time?

Yes, fasting is, a lot of people will use it to lose weight.

The Improvements and Long-term Benefits of Exercise

This overall session is on personal health and improvement.

The main reason, again, that we are going over personal health and improvement is to be able to maximize the longevity of your time in ministry.

And I've seen too many people's ministry cut short because of physical ailments and such that they could have prevented that have come to a halt.

So why don't we go ahead and begin this particular talk is on exercise and the improvements that are made by exercise and the long-term benefits of exercise.

And what I really hope to show you is that there really is probably, for exercise, more than any other health principle, there is an overabundance of the benefit of exercise just well studied.

It's 1 of those things that you can actually very well control for in studies more so than you can a lot of the other health principles.

And so I think that's part of the reason why there's a predominance of this.

But I just hope and encourage that we hope.

I hope you gain some encouragement that this is something that you can consistently put into practice.

So why don't we go ahead and start with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven we just want to thank you so much for allowing us to gather together again this afternoon.

Lord we're just grateful to you that each 1 of us that I see here are able to move and to get around.

But I know that many of us have challenges in this area also, the consistency of getting the exercise, and so I just pray that you would help me clearly articulate what those benefits are concerning exercise and health.

And I pray that you would please help us each to take away something, even myself, and affirm that commitment and the power to help us to put together those things we've learned.

I want to give you a little bit of my personal testimony concerning exercise.

I don't have very good hand-eye coordination.

My husband likes to joke around that if he wants to throw a ball at me, if I'm standing – sorry, if I want to throw a ball at him.

If he's standing still, I'm more likely to miss him.

Now, if he moves around, I'm more likely to actually hit him.

And so that sort of was my experience with exercise growing up.

I just did not, wasn't really interested in it.

I loved to do it, but I just wasn't very competitive and I couldn't really improve my hand-eye coordination and so it just didn't interest me very much until I took a summer school class for PE.

Just thought, hey, I'll get another extra credit over the summer so I can graduate a little bit, sooner take some other classes.

And I'm taking the class and what I ended up finding out was that while I still did not improve my hand-eye coordination that much, I found that I could keep running.

As long as my 2 feet were on the floor, I could keep going.

And I could keep going for quite a while.

And so that really got me excited, because the guy who had the most athletic ability and I were the only 2 left about an hour after 1 of the running components of our exercise.

And the thing that just kept me going was the fact that I was running longer than he did.

And I was like, well, I didn't know I could do this, but I'll just keep going until I don't know what else to do.

This got me on a track of actually exercising and running consistently about an hour every day because I enjoyed it and I loved the feeling that I got after exercise.

And I consistently throughout the rest of high school, college, through medical school, used to run consistently about 6 miles a day.

And it was really helpful, especially in a very stressful environment.

Gave me better efficiency as far as sleep was concerned, improved learning, improved a lot of the issues with fatigue.

I never, by God's grace, despite pulling from the time I was in, I'd probably say the last 2 years of medical school up until probably 3 or 4 years ago, I was consistently putting in about 80 to 110 hours a week, consistently of working, which is not normal or good in any form or fashion.

But by God's grace, the 1 thing, I never had to take caffeine to help me keep awake and alert.

And I believe that a significant component of that was the effect that exercise has on mood and alertness, on activity.

And I found also that water helped too, and we'll talk about that in the anxiety lecture next.

But exercise was a significant impact on, had a significant impact in my life and my overall health.

Our residency, now I'm working more consistently, working probably 80 to 110 hours a week.

And part of this was also because I wanted to spend more time with my patients, praying with them, encouraging them after I was done doing my typical rounds.

And so I enjoyed doing that, but 1 of the challenges was this.

You can't work 80 to 100 hours a week and still eat breakfast consistently, still exercise consistently, and do all of these things.

And so 1 of the things that ended up happening was that I noticed my efficiency all of a sudden.

I mean, obviously working that kind of number of hours for a long period of time is going to break you down eventually.

But fatigue started to worsen, efficiency of sleep went down because my exercise went down also.

I noticed that I had constipation, never struggled with bowel movements ever that I could remember and I was eating a plant-based diet by the end of residency, a fully plant-based diet by the end of residency, but just could not, just multiple problems, stress, anxiety, probably hit the deepest part of my depression during the first year of residency in the first 6 months.

And a lot of that, I believe, was due to a significant decrease in the exercise and movement.

What I'd like to encourage you with is to show you some of the benefits of exercise because that's 1 of the factors that I've had to come back and consistently put into my lifestyle that has been that more than anything else that I found makes a difference while doing the plant-based diet to keep me efficiently being able to go, especially under a very demanding calling.

And that's what many of you will experience as you go into ministry, that the laborers are few, right?

And so when that happens, oftentimes we end up taking on a little bit more than what we would like to take on.

God carries us through that, but there are limits to what we can do.

And exercise is 1 of those things that we really need to make sure we keep into account.

I want to share with you, this is a quote that came out of Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, written by Ellen White.

"'More people die for want of exercise than from overwork.

What is very interesting is this, I've had many of my patients over the years that told me, you know, I got my osteoarthritis because I worked too hard.

The interesting thing is this, when you go back and take a history, there was a period of time in which they did work very hard, use their muscles and quite significantly use their joints quite significantly.

But when you trace back to when their symptoms began, it began usually after a period of long sedentary lifestyle.

And then after that period of time, so you're talking about 345 years of more sedentary lifestyle, that their symptoms actually started to show up and then worsen.

And many of them attributed to back what they did when they were kids or when they were in high school or college and these are many years later after and I'm going to show you some of the data that actually works that speaks outside of that.

Very early, very early, I believe it was in the 1850s in their ministry, He ended up suffering a breakdown from working way too hard in the ministry, taking on way too many responsibilities.

And they essentially took a sabbatical for a year out.

If you have a chance to read the story, I believe it's in Selected Messages, I'm not sure.

But she talks about this period of time where where he just was not functional and he didn't want to do anything And she got to the point where she was just very anxious, didn't know what to do for him, and finally got the impression, you know what, I'm going to get him up and start doing things.

So 1 of the things that she did was she asked her son Willie to go and to buy 3 hoes specifically so that they could start tilling and moving the ground and working together.

And initially James didn't want to do it.

I don't know if any of you have ever been to that point in your life where you haven't been doing exercise consistently and then all of a sudden you need to start exercising again and the motivation just isn't there to do it consistently.

This is sort of the state that he was in at the time.

So she would actually get him out there doing little things.

As soon as he got started in doing it, his lifestyle would significantly improve.

It took about a year and a half but after consistently getting him outside and doing activity, especially outdoor activity, his functionality significantly improved and you know that for many more years afterwards he was actually able to be effective in ministry.

But even later on, 1 of the things that he struggled with was overwork.

Many of us again are challenged with this idea.

The 1 thing that seems to go as we get more and more involved in ministry is the consistency and the regularity of exercise.

We have a little over 600 skeletal muscles.

The numbers go between 600, 640 and 700 concerning the actual named muscles that we have in the body just because they're a little bit more difficult to define more so than bones.

But bones, especially joints, have something in common.

Joints especially have cartilage between them, okay?

Cartilage between joints has no direct blood supply.

Very very important to remember that cartilage itself has no direct blood supply.

So if you're looking at this picture, this is being the cartilage right here, here's the joint, here's the cartilage itself, here's the synovial fluid, you've got the joint capsule around there, but the cartilage itself has no direct blood supply.

Now Here's the thing, every cell in your body for the most part produces waste products.

Every cell in your body also requires nutrients to remain functional.

So here's the question, If you are producing waste products and your blood vessel or vascular system is the way that we get rid or take away those waste products and if that blood vessel system or that vascular system is the way that we get nutrients to the cartilage, how does, or to any tissue or any cell in the body, how on earth is cartilage going to be able to get rid of waste products and to gain nutrients if there's no direct blood vessel supply?

How to Deal With Anxiety

This topic specifically tonight is 1 that's actually pretty dear to my heart.

It's on anxiety and dealing with anxiety and and what are the What are the studies behind it some of them you've seen already and we're just going to kind of combine some of what we've talked about with some of the other data.

And I apologize, I just recently went from a Toshiba to a Mac computer.

And not all of my presentations are compatible, I guess, between PowerPoint and Keynote.

But anyway, so I apologize that I have a little challenge, but I am happy to send you the PowerPoint version of my anxiety notes if you want them, if you just let me know.

But Why don't we go ahead and start with a word of prayer then?

Father in heaven, we just want to thank you again so much for the privilege of being able to come together, to work together, to learn together.

We thank you for the abundance of information that you've given to us to teach us, to help us, to grow us.

And I pray that as we touch upon this issue of anxiety, there's a lot that you have to say concerning that.

And I pray that you would teach us how to be able to take what we learn and to put it into practice.

And I pray that we would be able to maybe even encourage others that struggle with this, as there are many more out there than we realize that struggle with the issue of anxiety.

And I just pray again, may your words be lifted up and your principles be lifted up.

Recently, over the last 2 years, I've seen an increasing number of patients, professionals.

These are working professionals who have become debilitated by anxiety.

And it's interestingly, working professionals, especially those in ministry, been doing ministry for a long period of time, that are really significantly impacted by anxiety.

More so women than men, but that's mainly by diagnosis.

I don't know if the prevalence, because 1 of the questions is whether the prevalence may actually be a little higher in men than it is in women, but definitely more so in women.

What really bothered me was seeing women who had accomplished quite a bit in life for a long period of time, but just all of a sudden it seemed like they could not function because of severe anxiety.

I kept wondering, what is the common denominator?

I'm going back, I'm reviewing charts, I'm looking at things, trying to figure out.

These are people, these are people, people with strong faiths, active in church, reading the Bible, praying.

I mean, from what they've told me, people who are eating plant-based diets.

We're gonna start with some of the lifestyle issues.

There are 3 in particular common denominators that I found in every single 1 of the charts of my women who were struggling with anxiety.

Among the men that I had in the charts, and this has been charts that I've collected over the last 4 years, among men the 2 of these applied a lot a little bit more so than among women, But the number 1, can anyone think of the number 1 lifestyle factor that across the board men and women struggled with that contributed to increased anxiety or inability to deal with?

And I'm talking about, I'll tell you, you know, this last week I saw a university professor who had come after years of treatment for anxiety.

Intelligent, brilliant woman, able to do, I mean has been able to do so many projects, finished her PhD, I mean, accomplished quite a bit.

And all of a sudden now she's paralyzed and can't function anymore.

Used to be so active in ministry and just gone, done.

Just everything worries and becomes, She's become very anxious in the process.

But consistently I asked her, and it was funny because you went through everything and doing the plant-based, doing everything, I'm thinking, man, goodness, what on earth is going on?

And as I look on there, when I asked her how much exercise is she doing, because I asked 2 questions.

It's important to be able to recognize cause to effect, right?

Because anxiety, severe anxiety, oftentimes is associated with depression also, there's, there can be a lack of motivation with that and it's not motivation because they just are lazy per se but the depressed levels of serotonin especially in the brain the ability to plan ahead and to move and to do things just isn't there.

2 questions that I ask is 1, are you consistently exercising now or what is your exercise routine right now?

But 2, when you last remember being able to be functional, how much did you exercise?

And what I find consistently is that people either were, you know, used to exercise, they may have had a lot of stressors growing up during the times that they were doing their PhD and some of these other things, you know, prior to that.

They were exercising consistently but then whenever they became, got more intensely involved in ministry or in business prospects or whatever it was, exercise diminished and maybe symptoms that could have been underlying before from other things we're going to talk about really became more profound when their exercise dropped.

And this is actually 1 of the things that more consistently, and I wish I could show you some of the data that was there from it, but 1 of the things that we know about exercise, exercise we mentioned increases beta endorphins, right?

That's 1 of your mood, your feel good hormones.

But 1 of the other things that exercise does is that it improves the efficiency of your neurotransmitters, okay?

The efficiency, especially the availability of your neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, okay?

The ability to be able to sense pleasure and satisfaction, especially long term.

But remember we talked about exercise and that interesting little thing molecule called BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor, okay?

Your ability to learn and unlearn certain things, we're gonna talk about cognitive behavioral therapy a little bit towards the end, but 1 of the challenges that we found is that when people are not exercising regularly And they're trying to fix issues, especially with thought processes that come with anxiety.

It is very, very difficult for them to do so because of the decreased elasticity of the brain to be able to unlearn and relearn some of the behaviors of the past.

So exercise is 1 of those things that is very, very critical.

The other reason exercise makes a big difference, we believe, is because it just improves circulation, especially to the frontal lobe.

And what we found is that, again, interval training is 1 of those things that maximizes and improves circulation to the frontal lobe of our brain, the 1 that allows us to executively plan and to look at information in an appropriate or in a more realistic picture.

When I talk to patients about the lifestyle aspects concerning anxiety, many times they'll think, they'll want, you know, will want to deal with the thoughts.

And we do need, with any lifestyle program with anxiety, You need to deal with the thought aspect of it also.

And like I said, we're going to talk about cognitive behavioral therapy in just a bit.

But 1 of the things that is health in our sense, why does lifestyle make a difference?

You're trying to fight and combat a disease.

You want everything in your arsenal, every tool you can to be able to maximize your ability to deal with that issue and that problem.

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Personal Health

The Improvements and Long-term Benefits of Exercise

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