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A FREE EXTRA DECADE OF LIFE #11
WHO WANTS AN EXTRA DULL DECADE?
There’s an old knee-slapper out there about a guy who gets some longevity advice from a friend. “If you want to live to be a hundred,” the counselor said, “you just gotta live a certain way. No smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no dice, no cheeseburgers, no filet mignon steaks, no chasing girls, no staying out past ten thirty at night, et cetera, et cetera.”
And the guy listening to “The List” got a rather pinched look on his face. “If I really do all that, it’s guaranteed that I’ll live to be a hundred?”
“Not for sure,” said the older man. “But it’ll sure SEEM like a hundred!” In other words, such a sparse, spartan, sterile, sorry lifestyle will drag by like it IS a century, whether you beat the actuarial tables or not.
Well, friend, here we are right in the middle of a radio project that might sound to the uninitiated like the very same thing. A FREE EXTRA DECADE OF LIFE, we say in our series title. And we offer to send you a book that seconds the motion: Live 10 Healthy Years Longer. But you might be wondering: do I want those kinds of years? An extra decade of bran muffins and wheat germ spinach ice cream and diet carrot juice might not be worth the extra effort.
I’d like to counter that with two points. First of all, healthy living does not have to be rotten living. The whole world agrees now that living without cigarettes isn’t dull and rotten; it’s living WITH cigarettes — and cancer and emphysema and heart disease and sexual impotence — that makes life drab . . . and sometimes nonexistent. The same with booze; the same with obesity and cholesterol. We’ve been mentioning all along a control group of more than 27,000 men who have lived for decades by this L.L.L. — the “Live-Longer Lifestyle.” Their healthy habits have given them — and this is statistically verified — eight, ten, even 13 years more than the average citizen. But listen. These are happy, fun, abundant-life people. Their non-smoking lifestyle isn’t dragging them down. They don’t miss the hangovers they don’t have. They eat well . . . in fact, I’ve been to many a party, many a church potluck where the table was just spread with the bountiful goodies that still do fit into the Live-Longer Lifestyle. Believe me, nobody’s hurting out there in Longevity Land . . . and they’re not hurting for those extra ten to 13 years.
We need to all remember that Jesus Christ came to this earth and offered to all of His friends what He Himself called “the abundant life.” A life that’s better. Not just longer, but fuller as well. The last thing He wants to do is to rip you off.
Here’s Point Two about the so-called drabness of life for a health-minded person. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently described its own ten-year program called “Healthy People 2000.” The average person who lives a normal life — NOT the extra ten or 13 years — is going to spend twelve years of that AVERAGE life struggling with the following: pneumonia, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. So not only does the guy driving in the fast lane with his cholesterol and his chocolate cookies not get the extra years, but ten or twelve of the years he DOES get . . . aren’t very good ones.
Jan Kuzma and Cecil Murphey, the two writers who have put together this incredible book, put an interesting reality before us here in Chapter Eleven. Every day there are about 2,700 people just here in the United States who die of heart disease. Add another 1,430 who die — again, that’s three or four jumbo jets crashing with no survivors, every single day, to re-use that old cigarette-smoke metaphor — from various kinds of cancer. Every day of the year there are 4,000 funerals just because of heart disease and cancer. And the kicker is this: scientists tell us that a good 60% of those deaths just plain and simple did not have to happen. People’s health habits could have prevented six out of ten of those funeral processions. In fact, that’s essentially true for all five of the worst diseases out there: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and osteoporosis.
The bottom line is this: if you’ve been tempted to think in terms of “when your number’s up, it’s up,” or, “When the Grim Reaper comes for you, there’s nothing you can do” . . . friend, that just isn’t so. In fact, as Cecil and Jan tackle the first of these five premature killers, heart disease, they make this very bold statement:
“[Heart disease] is NOT a natural disease. Your heart is a strong muscle.”
It’s incredible to realize that a muscle the size of a fist can beat 100,000 times a day, and BE DESIGNED to do that effectively for a lot longer than we sometimes let it. But when it’s well-fed with nutrients, when the blood flow goes out and back without restrictions, and when the heart itself is allowed to rest as we sleep at night, when it’s well-conditioned through a good exercise program . . . there’s no reason for a heart attack to come along and take away 12 years. It doesn’t have to happen!
Have you ever gone out to wash the car, and halfway through you weren’t getting any water through the hose? And when you looked, you saw that there was a kink in the line, or you had pulled the hose under one of the tires, cutting off the flow. Well, when cholesterol or plaque build up in your arteries, or when nicotine comes along and damages them, the same thing happens inside of me or you. What is coronary heart disease? It’s when blood going through the arteries can’t get back TO your heart. Part of your heart actually dies, and you have a heart attack.
We talked about high cholesterol in a previous segment, and found that even if you’re suffering right now from high cholesterol, your body can quickly fix itself. These two writers tell us:
“For every one percent reduction in your total blood-cholesterol levels” — now listen to this — “your risk of heart disease goes down TWO percent.”
You can drop the numbers even more by taking a daily dose of vitamin E . . . but notice. If you attack those bad cholesterol numbers through diet and exercise, you get paid back two-to-one in reduced risk of heart disease. Those are odds any gambler in Vegas would grab in a heartbeat, no pun intended.
We’ve mentioned all along a vegetarian diet, which the majority of these Live-Longer Lifestyle participants adhered to. By the way, a non-flesh diet is a major factor in reducing these five diseases. For every one hundred people in the general population who experience coronary heart disease, only 55 people in this study did. For lung cancer, the number went from 100 clear down to TWENTY; isn’t that unbelievable? But we find that eating nuts — peanuts, almonds, walnuts — is extremely beneficial. They’re all high in monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat, high in vitamin E, and helpful in reducing plaque buildup in your arteries. In fact, if a person has nuts in their diet five or more times in a week, just that one variable cuts your chances of having a fatal heart attack by 50%. Replacing red meat with soy protein also happens to be an excellent way of avoiding heart disease.
Killer disease number two is cancer, and Jan and Cecil tell us that it’s not just cigarettes that bring it on. Diet actually is the most important factor in helping the body fight the onset of cancer. Especially for the women in our audience today, let me share this interesting news: a vegetarian diet can help you prevent breast cancer. Did you know that? A person who eats meat processes estrogen differently from a vegetarian, we’re told. A meat-eater recycles more estrogen — it stays in the bloodstream — while a vegetarian does better at passing it out of their body.
It’s been shown that a lot of cruciferous vegetables — cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower — help prevent all forms of cancer. Cutting down on caffeine helps. Keeping your weight under control. Getting daily sunshine, but not too much. And of course, for women, those monthly self-exams and yearly Pap smears are so important.
How about Number Three — diabetes? Half of all the world’s diabetics live right here in the United States, where we have a fat-rich diet. The Longevity Center in Santa Barbara, California, checks in and tells us that patients who adopt aspects of this Live-Longer Lifestyle, and especially the low-fat, high-fiber diet and exercise programs, are often able to discontinue their insulin injections. In fact, it’s beginning to look like — with diet alone — half of all diabetics could recover within months and be completely free of the disease.
The Number Four killer is hypertension — another word for high blood pressure — and our two researchers tell us that salt, arterial buildup, and obesity are the three main culprits. For women, you can add estrogen. Notice again how we have it within our power to send the Grim Reaper packing for a decade if not longer.
Well, friend, we’d love to send you the book — and empower YOU to take charge of your life. I know God was speaking in spiritual terms when He said through the prophet Ezekiel:
“Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit? Why will you die, O house of Israel?”
The same is true physically, so here’s to a new heart, and a long life.
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