By CHRIS FIELDS

 

Kitchen Tune-Up

 

     I’m in my yearly Bible reading tour again, and my journey has landed me back in the book of Leviticus. This book always resonates with me as God’s book on health and the body’s natural healing and cleansing process. It also speaks on how to detect infectious diseases, how to steer clear of infectious disease, and how to prevent and mitigate the spread of disease.

 

     Some of these techniques would be beneficial today if adhered to, like banning people with signs of an infectious disease to outside the city limits for a certain timeframe until they were cleared by designated authorities, especially during COVID-19. Some countries still follow these protocols. Quarantining, masks and social distancing were forms of that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many people had an issue with that, especially Christians, as they felt it was cutting off a human right — not knowing that God’s standard for mitigating the spread of an infectious disease in Leviticus was social distancing and isolation. That’s an aside.

 

     The real treatment process I want to point out is the actual procedure that was given to contribute to disease recovery: time to allow your body to heal. If your body healed, you were healthy and free to go back to the general population. If it didn’t, or if the signs and symptoms got worse, you were required to remain in isolation.

 

     Our bodies were made to heal themselves with proper time, but as human understanding of God’s creation evolved, the healing process was sped up through medicine. God didn’t add pharmaceutical prescriptions to His treatment plan in Leviticus. His instructions were to give time and allow the body to do what He created it to do — but God did instruct man to cultivate His creation, and a lot of cultivation came through scientific discoveries like medicines. Medicines are meant to aid and enhance our body’s natural healing process and return our body faster to its natural way of functioning. They weren’t and aren’t made to heal us; only God can do that.

 

     There is a misconception about medicines manufactured to address cardiometabolic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, and now obesity. A lot of people with one of these diagnoses think their condition won’t get any worse, due to them being on medication, but they don’t understand that these medicines are made to be more effective alongside implementation of the necessary lifestyle and behavioral changes. Treatment plans have evolved from just prescribing medicine to prescribing a holistic plan that addresses these diseases in conjunction with the medicines that have been produced to address them.

 

     Those more holistic approaches are what? You guessed it … healthy eating, active living, and stress management. These holistic approaches look different for everyone, which is why it is important to seek licensed health professionals in their respective areas, or a multi-disciplinary healthcare care team (like ours), so you can ensure you are getting adequate care for the multiple factors that contribute to cardiometabolic disease development.

Chris Fields is the founder and executive director of H.E.A.L. Mississippi and a graduate in kinesiology with advance studies in nutrition. He serves as a clinical exercise physiologist/CPT and is credentialed in Exercise Is Medicine through American College of Sports Medicine.

 

Pro-Life Mississippi