Blogs

Depression Increases Risk of Common Arrhythmia
Depression affects an estimated 16 million Americans, and the mental health issue has been linked to an increasing number of physical ailments in recent years. The new study, conducted by the American Heart Association, revealed that those who were on antidepressants or scored in the highest category for depression symptoms were 30 percent more at risk for atrial fibrillation. Exactly how depression affects heart health remains unclear, researchers said, but several possibilities have been suggested.

“Depression can induce a variety of changes in the body [by] increasing the levels of inflammation in the body, activating the autonomic nervous system which increases the catecholamine levels in our body, activating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis which increases the cortisol levels in our body, and activating the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system,” Garg told MD Magazine.

See also How Does Depression Affect the Heart for further evidence that treating depression is not something to be delayed, but rather should be addressed with urgency.

9 Bible Verses for Depression to Shine Light into Darkness
It’s not the only answer, but it’s usually part of it.

Food to feed your MIND: 7 diet tweaks that help fight depression and anxiety
“According to the Mental Health Foundation, those who reported a mental health problem of any degree also reported a less healthy diet, in terms of fresh fruit and vegetables and cooking from scratch but included more unhealthy foods such as crisps, chocolate, ready meals and takeaways.

A systematic review, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that high intakes of fruit, vegetables, fish and whole grains are associated with a reduced risk of depression.

It’s no coincidence that the rise in mental health problems in the last 50 years also accompanies a rise in the consumption of processed foods and less fresh fruits and vegetables.”

James Packer: Resignation puts focus on ‘high-flier’ mental health
Australian billionaire James Packer has received much public praise since quitting his gaming empire due to mental health reasons. His resignation has also prompted discussion about mental health at the top of business. In connection with that, here’s lots of good advice from the Harvard Business Review on When You Need to Take Time off Work for Mental Health Reasons

Just because you don’t know of anyone else at your company who has taken time off for mental health reasons doesn’t mean there isn’t precedent. Diagnosable mental health conditions impact one in five Americans in any given year. Treatment for the most common conditions (namely depression) is effective 80% of the time, but fewer than half of the people who need help get it, often because of social stigma, the fear of repercussions at work, or lack of access to quality, affordable care.

New Book

How to Break up with Your Phone by Catherine Price. The first half of the book delves into how phones and apps are designed to be addictive and the research regarding how the time we spend on them damages our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories. The second half of the book then follows with the antidote – a 30-day guide to making customized changes to your settings, apps, environment, and mindset that will enable you to take back control of your life.

Kindle Books

Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Foreword by John Piper): Three Classic Works by John Owen $2.99.

The Mark of the Christian (IVP Classics) by Francis A. Schaeffer $2.99.

A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering by Michael Horton $2.99.

Quote of the Day

I admire Jordan Peterson’s courage, I’m grateful for his stand against political correctness, and I’m deeply moved by his genuine and practical compassion for young men. But, in my humble opinion, his best-selling book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is largely gobbledegook. I’ve rarely seen so many words, and so much complexity, used to communicate such simple common sense ideas. There are gems here and there, but you have to dig long and hard to get to them underneath the amalgam of weird Scripture interpretation, evolutionary science, and psychological mumbo-jumbo. For example, one early paragraph on sleep resonated with my own experience of counseling people with depression:

I always ask my clinical clients first about sleep. Do they wake up in the morning at approximately the time the typical person wakes up, and at the same time every day? If the answer is no, fixing that is the first thing I recommend. It doesn’t matter so much if they go to bed at the same time each evening [I disagree with that. DPM], but waking up at a consistent hour is a necessity. Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer had unpredictable daily routines. The systems that mediate negative emotions are tightly tied to the properly cyclical circadian rhythms.

I couldn’t agree more. Sleep is about the first area I ask about (it’s usually a mess), and fixing that and establishing a regular daily rhythm can pay quick and big dividends.

Every age and stage of life has its own special trials and temptations. The young are called to flee youthful lusts (2 Tim. 2:22). The middle-aged are warned about the choking cares of this life (Mark 4:19).

Even seniors have their own age-specific temptations.

In Psalm 71, we find just such a senior who is cast down by life’s events: increasing outward and inward troubles (vv. 4, 10–11, 13) together with failing strength (v. 9). And yet he turns again and again to God.

This spiritual dynamic is encapsulated in verse 20, where the psalmist writes, “You have shown me great and sore troubles, but you shall quicken me again, and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth.”

Let’s look at some of the great and sore troubles of old age, and how the Lord strengthens His elderly people.

Read the rest of this article at Tabletalk. It explains how the Gospel helps seniors face the challenges of loneliness, regret, bitterness, pain, and fear.

Blogs

It’s Time to Reckon with Celebrity Power
“It was not a great week. In three separate cases in my immediate circles, a person with significant power at the top of an organization, each one a subject of flattering major media exposure during their career, was confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct and related misdeeds. ”

Thoughts On The Rise And Fall Of Pastors
On a similar topic: “In the past year, five of my friends who are pastors have lost their ministries because of moral failure. Five. Most of them were widely known beyond their local contexts as authors, conference speakers, movement leaders and such. From the outside, they appeared to be at their peak.”

Why We Shouldn’t Forsake the ‘Forgotten American in Turkey’
“A pastor and North Carolina native is being held in Turkey on unsubstantiated charges of terrorism-related activity. Here’s why Christians shouldn’t forget this “forgotten American in Turkey.”"

Teens and Disappointment
“The teens I counsel come with a variety of stories and struggles. They are unique, and each case requires delicate, individualized care. There is no cookie-cutter approach to helping our youth, but there is an overarching truth that can be emphasized throughout your sessions with a teen: God will never disappoint. His love is a love that will never disappoint, and no amount of suffering can ever undo what God has done for us in Christ.”

How to Break up With Your Phone
“Catherine Price is an author and science journalist that has spent the last two years trying to find the solution for her troubling relationship with her phone. In her latest book, How to Break Up With Your Phone, Price unveils an abundance of tools and techniques that can be used to take back your time and attention from the grips of your smartphone. The book is a practical guide that is split into two parts – the first part focuses on the science behind addicting tech and the impact of smartphones on our attention, ability to focus, health, and relationships. The second half then gives you a 30-day guide filled with research-backed strategies to help you form an intentional relationship with your phone that’s healthy, feels good, and lasts.”

Stem cell transplant ‘game changer’ for MS patients
What an answer to prayer! I know a young man with MS who has successfully undergone this transplant in Chicago. It’s truly amazing what God has enabled scientists and doctors to discover and do.

Kindle Books

Why We Pray by William Philip $4.99.

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place by Andy Crouch $1.59. A must-read (and a must-do) for every family.

A Quick Introduction to the New Testament  by D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo $0.99.

Here’s the video to show your kids at the end of Expedition 12 of Exploring the Bible. If you want to bookmark a page where all the videos will eventually appear, you can find them on my blog, on YouTube, or the Facebook page for Exploring the Bible.

If you haven’t started your kids on the book yet, you can begin anytime and use it with any Bible version. Here are some sample pages.

You can get it at RHB, Westminster Books, Crossway, or Amazon. If you’re in Canada use Reformed Book Services. Some of these retailers have good discounts for bulk purchases by churches and schools.

I was tempted to entitle this article “Smartphones are Making Dumb People.” However, “dumb” is not a politically correct word and might distract from the point that smartphones are damaging our cognitive abilities.

In Having Your Smartphone Nearby Takes a Toll on Your Thinking the Harvard Business Review reports on recent University of Chicago research that asked, “Do our smartphones affect us even when we aren’t interacting with them—when they are simply nearby?”

Participants were set various mental challenges, but before completing these tasks, they “asked participants to either place their phones in front of them (face-down on their desks), keep them in their pockets or bags, or leave them in another room. Importantly, all phones had sound alerts and vibration turned off, so the participants couldn’t be interrupted by notifications.”

The results were striking: individuals who completed these tasks while their phones were in another room performed the best, followed by those who left their phones in their pockets. In last place were those whose phones were on their desks. We saw similar results when participants’ phones were turned off: people performed worst when their phones were nearby, and best when they were away in a separate room. Thus, merely having their smartphones out on the desk led to a small but statistically significant impairment of individuals’ cognitive capacity—on par with effects of lacking sleep.

These findings support my argument for creatives, students, pastors, and other knowledge workers scheduling Untouchable Days. But in some ways, it goes even further by demanding that we not only shut off our phones but put them out of sight and mind. As the report says:

The mere presence of our smartphones can adversely affect our ability to think and problem-solve — even when we aren’t using them. Even when we aren’t looking at them. Even when they are face-down. And even when they are powered off altogether.

Why is even the mere presence of a smartphone so damaging to our cognitive abilities?

[The research shows that] the mere presence of our smartphones is like the sound of our names – they are constantly calling to us, exerting a gravitational pull on our attention….Attempts to block or resist this pull takes a toll by impairing our cognitive abilities. In a poignant twist, then, this means that when we are successful at resisting the urge to attend to our smartphones, we may actually be undermining our own cognitive performance.

The researchers recommend that “when our smartphones aren’t directly necessary, and when being fully cognitively available is important, setting aside a period of time to put them away—in another room—can be quite valuable.” For maximizing productivity they suggest that we should define windows of time when we are physically distanced from our phones, especially when working on projects requiring deeper thought. They even go to the extreme of calling for phones to be banned from meetings and not just banned from use. Crazy, eh?!

Blogs

3 Perks Of Being A Christian Business Owner
“Based on my experience in a multi-generational family business, and as the founder of my own business, here are three reasons why I think it’s great to be a Christian business owner.”

15 Things Seminary Couldn’t Teach Me
“In 15 Things Seminary Couldn’t Teach Me, real pastors get honest about the joys and challenges of the first five years of pastoral ministry—and how they bridged the gap between seminary training and life in a local church.”

A Pastor Opens Up About His Struggle with Depression
“I’ve suffered from depression for much of my life and used to wonder what was wrong with me, especially in certain seasons when it just didn’t seem to fit with being a mature Christian. When I was younger, it could get so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed for long stretches at a time and I paid the price. When I look back on a lot of things that went wrong in life, some of the failures I experienced were because of immaturity but much of it was also a result of mental health issues I refused to acknowledge.”

Are You Godly Enough to Watch Smut?
“It’s a distressing time we’ve come to when the ability or desire to watch filthy stuff is considered mature and where the inability or unwillingness to do so is considered infantile. It’s a disappointing time we’ve come to when we long to be godly enough to watch smut.”

Why you should care about World Down Syndrome Day
“As Christians, let’s commit to double our efforts to communicate what it means to be an image bearer of Christ to the outside world. Let’s be sure our actions in other areas aren’t inhibiting this message from being received. And let’s live in such a way that the unbeliever recognizes that we see the inherent dignity in every person regardless of health, status, and color.”

Good and Bad Goals for Studying New Testament Greek
Three goals you should not set, and three goals you should.

Kindle Books

If you like audiobooks, Christians Get Depressed Too and Refresh: Embracing a Grace-Paced Life in a World of Endless Demands are on offer at Christian audiobooks for $4.99.

The First Days of Jesus: The Story of the Incarnation  by Andreas J. Köstenberger $3.99.

Connected by Erin Davis $2.99.

Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God’s Everything by Anonymous $2.99.