Monthly Archives: November 2016

Thanksgiving and Healing

Posted on by
A grateful heart can work wonders!  Like fertilizer and sunshine are to a garden, gratitude and thankfulness are to the human spirit.

 

America is such a blessed nation.   We have one of the highest gross domestic product per capita.  We have over 40% of the world’s wealth.  And if you are poor in America, you are still rich compared to the poor in many other places.  For example, even our poor kids get vaccinated.  They go to school.  If you live in a household that is below the poverty level, there is still more than an 80% chance you have a cellphone.  There is a 58% chance you have a computer   There is over a 95% chance you have a refrigerator, stove and microwave.

 

When was the last time you actually thanked God for hot water while you took a  shower?  Or thought to be grateful that even though you could not sleep, you were safe in your home and laying on a clean mattress with a roof over your head?  Even if you overindulge at Thanksgiving dinner and become sick, remember…..you live in a country where nearly everyone has a flush toilet!  That isn’t true everywhere.

 

So as we gather with friends and family to celebrate the many blessings God has bestowed on us, let’s remember to pray for others.  Being comfortable should make us generous!   Extending a helping hand to neighbors will only lead to further blessing.  America has always been a generous and kind nation……..that kindness and caring should be our greatest American export!!  May we always be a  beacon of light to the rest of the world!
                                                                                                                       images

Sleepless in Small Town

Posted on by
It’s almost 2 AM and I am AWAKE!  Why is sleep so elusive sometimes?  I ponder this in the middle of the night a lot.  (It would help if someone would discover a cure for snoring husbands!)  I am not alone, however, in my sleeplessness.  I decided to make a list of things that sometimes help.  So if you are not one of the 2% of Sleepless Elite who genetically only need about 3 hours a night, try this…..
  1.  A COLD room – core body temperature needs to decrease 2-3 degrees  to initiate sleep
  1.  Turn off all light – even flipping your cell phone over, especially if incoming messages light your phone.
  1.  Soft music may help, but use a timer so an inconsistency in the noise won’t reawaken you
  1.  A medium firm mattress – too soft and too firm are both problems.  Also, a mattress is really only good for about 10 years     before it starts to break down.  Of course, your mattress may last longer if you don’t sleep as much!
  1.   If you cannot sleep and have been lying awake for an hour, get up and do a simple chore or two, and then try again
  1.   Avoid caffeine (a no brainer)
  1.   Finally, Thanksgiving is coming, and with it turkey!  Turkey has tryptophan, an amino acid that promotes melatonin   production  and melatonin  promotes sleep!
Alright, I have done my “middle of the night” chore.  Time to try and sleep again……….

Hippocrates and Assisted Suicide

Posted on by

Assisted suicide, or helping the infirm or terminal to die, is touted as being kind and merciful. But it is not progressive. It is not new. It was a routine practice by physicians in times past. And it was not always kind or merciful. It was not even always the choice of the person being helped to die. Sometimes it was the choice of someone else with a vested interest in one’s passing.

Hippocrates, father of western medicine, is believed to have died in 370 BC. He felt strongly that physicians were to be healers. ONLY healers. But even that long ago, physicians were under pressure to act otherwise. You may have summoned a doctor with the thought that they would do their best to help you get well. But they may have been paid by someone else with a different goal in mind. The potion you thought would help you maybe didn’t.  It maybe wasn’t meant to .

The oath named for Hippocrates was an effort to change that fact. Physicians would take an oath that they would not succumb to any force that would influence them to harm a fellow human being. In its original form it states “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.”

So again, today’s push for assisted suicide is nothing new. It is not an idea put forth by enlightened men and women, but rather the resurrection of an old idea that was resisted by honorable men of the past.  Recently, on November 8, when the state of Colorado voted to allow legally assisted suicide, it stepped back in time.

I want people to think about one thing. When choosing a physician, it may be wise to ask how they feel about legally assisted suicide. Right now you may be healthy.  You may not currently have a severe disability.  You may not have those close to you who wish you gone.    But tomorrow may be different! Your situation may change. If that happens, how will you feel about a physician who, If you get sick enough, or depressed enough, or inconvenient enough, would be willing to snuff you out?


															

		
		
	





	
		



	
	


		
		

			
			
A Warning from William Penn  (Wake UP America)


							

					Posted on   by  				

			
		


					

				
William Penn, a guy of some reputation in early America, has been quoted as saying “Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad. . . .”




Oh my!!!  What would he tell us to do in our current situation?  He would probably wonder how we got in this situation.  Actually, I wonder how we got in this situation.  But here we are, and we had better DO SOMETHING!




First of all, every citizen who cares should




    

  1.  become informed, not just about candidates, but about issues
    2. 

  2.  consider how corruption has taken over at all levels and work to find it, expose it, and prevent it
    3. 

  3.  consider if there is corruption in their own life and how vulnerable they are to it
    4. 

  4.  VOTE!!!
    5. 

  5.  If you really believe in a candidate who seems genuine, HELP THEM RUN!
    6. 

  6.  If you cannot find a genuine candidate, then RUN YOURSELF
    7. 





For those of us who love our country and want to be under the leadership of men and women we can respect, there is no longer any room for apathy.  We better start letting our voices be heard.  We better start spending our money wisely.  We better get our heads our of the proverbial sand and quit looking just to our own interests, but also to the interests of others.  If we do not do this, we risk waking up in a land of tyranny……It has happened before!!!





															

		
		
	





	
		



	
	


		
		

			
			
Laughter is Good Medicine


							

					Posted on   by  				

			
		


					

				
A cheerful heart is a good medicine (Prov 17:22)images




Every comedian knows that there is power in laughter.  Every doctor knows this too.  This is not a new discovery.   Proverbs 17 says “A cheerful heart is a good medicine.”  And I say that it is a medicine that is in short supply today.  In my office, or out of my office, I rarely hear laughter.  As an experiment, just sit and listen in a restaurant.  If you can hear anything above the TVs on the wall, it will likely not be a lot of laughter.  Too bad.  What can be done to inject back into society a good, old fashioned dose of frivolity?




For starters,  we can begin to look for the good around us.  There is plenty of bad but we have some control over where we focus.  There is a power in positive thinking.  Even when life seems to be falling apart, there is usually at least something hopeful on which to concentrate.  If not, then go looking!  Or decide to provide the good and hopeful yourself!  If nothing good seems to be happening, then go do a random act of kindness for someone else.  It doesn’t need to cost you anything other than time and effort.  A smile is not expensive.  Yet a smile, medically speaking, leads to a release of helpful endorphins that will lead to your own better health.




Ah yes…..A cheerful heart doeth good like medicine.  Be that dose of drug for someone today.  You may end up cheering yourself up in the process.