Mend Your Diet

life and health in our mouth?

The following article, entitled, "Patient Know Best", appeared in the August 1991 of the Reader's Digest: "A person's answer to the question, "Is your health excellent, good, fair or poor?" is a remarkable predictor of who will live or die over the next four years according to new finding. A study of more than 2800 men and women 65 and older found that those who rate their health 'poor' are four out of five times more likely to die in the next four years than those who rate their health 'excellent.' This was the case even if examinations show the respondancts to be in comparable health. These findings are supported by a review of five other large studies, totaling 23,000 people, whick reached similar conclusions according to Ellen Idler, a sociologist a Rutgers University, and epidemiologist Stanislav Kasl of Yale university School of Medicine, co-others of the new study." People that have an image of themselves being in poor health will talk about poor health. Even though they may be in good health, they seem to live out the reality of the image they have of themselves even unto death. This would confirm Proverbs 18:21, Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. What you believe and speak not only affect your body, but your immune system, cells regeneration from surgery or injuries, and going even farther, the health of your spirit and your mind, even spoiled or dying relationship with others, your far away dreams and hope, and let not leave out our finances IMAGE. Our words of failure or success has become either a blessing or a curse to ourselves..maybe even to others.(if they agree or not with your words)

Public Comments

1. good point!!
2. I agree with you! Our emotions will either make us healthy or ill depending on how we feel. People who are sad and angry all the time will suffer from a stroke or any other illness sooner than someone who is happy and lives well. That's not to say that a happy person won't get ill at some point in their lives, but a happy person will more than likely live longer than a person with anger or sadness. So everyone should have a laugh and live a happy healthy life. Sadness, anger and anything negative kills you. Stay positive! Take care.
3. How do you know that those people who answered "poor" didn't already know something about their health that wasn't to be seen in those supposedly comparable exams? How do you know that the differences seen were all about self-image? Consider this table from the CDC of life expectancy in the past century: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus06.pdf#027 Now from what you write that death and life are merely in what you say about yourself, the only explanation for life expectancy getting longer is that people are speaking more positively. That's not my experience. You're free to believe Proverbs 18: 21 is all you need to know about health if you want. It's a free country. You can even pile up all sorts of words to pretend that's a rational belief. Yet if you learn enough science and medicine, it doesn't make sense. I had a career as a neurologist. My patients didn't split into a group who did well because they were optimistic and another who did poorly because they were pessimistic. People don't get sick because they're bad. They don't do poorly with their sickness because they pick the wrong words to say. They do poorly because of diseases that don't care at all about who they are morally or their personality. I have found reasons to trust God in my life. Pretending that I can control my life merely by magic words is not one of those reasons. In fact the folly of those who do believe in magic words, whether they claim the effect is spiritual or immunological, is something I had to realize never came from God. God says you're wrong. Are you willing to listen to Him about that?