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In Genesis 2 28, God says it is not good for the man to be alone. Man, is there for a lot of truth packed into that brief statement? Close, connected, loving relationships are beneficial to our health in many ways. On the flip side, a lack of connected loving relationships is equally detrimental to our health. Let's talk about it.
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Welcome to the Christian Healthy Lifestyle Podcast, where I help you navigate natural health so you can stay out of the doctor's office, age gracefully, and live a more purpose-driven, abundant life. I'm your host, David Sandstrom. Today we're on pillar number two on the Nine Pillars of Health series, love for others. When it comes to relationships, there's a lot of roads we can take. There's a lot of different aspects to our relational well-being. And I worked
Pretty long and hard on this episode. I changed my notes several times working through because wanted to get this right. This is a really important topic, and I wanted to get this right. So today I want to focus on the example Jesus gave us and how close relationships impact our health and well-being for good or bad. At the end of the episode, I'm going to share some simple lifestyle habits that had the power to transform our relationships for the better. We've all heard of the Ten Commandments.
But I'll bet you haven't heard of the eleventh commandment. In John thirteen, thirty four and thirty five we see this, Jesus speaking. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Jesus doesn't often use such strong language as here's a new commandment. This isn't a suggestion, it's a command.
Can you just imagine what the disciples were thinking? What's he doing? Nobody messes with the Ten Commandments. Well, Jesus did. Jesus said in Matthew five seventeen, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill it. The law and the prophets is an old testament way of referring to the Bible. So in other words, Jesus was saying the whole Bible, the whole written word of God, up to this point was preferred.
Preparation for this revelation, that it's all about Him, His life, work, and resurrection, the example He gave us is what the Bible is all about. He conquered sin and death with His resurrection, but what was the example He left us with His life? To love and serve one another. In Matthew chapter 20, starting verse 26, we find this, Jesus speaking, Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant.
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And whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many. So Jesus' life is the fulfillment of the law, and love for God and love for others is the whole point. That's the example he left us. Just two chapters later in the book of Matthew, in chapter twenty-two, starting verse thirty-six, we see this.
Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment? His reply was You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. So again, Jesus is saying this is the fulfillment of the law. The whole Bible can be summed up with this love God and love others. That's the Bible in a nutshell.
We get a little more insight with this same encounter in Mark chapter twelve, starting in verse thirty. Jesus was asked what the what the greatest commandment was, and again Jesus replied, And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. The scribe said to him, Right, teacher, you have truly stated that he is one and
And there is no one else besides him, and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as himself, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. There's the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. To love God and love others is is a much higher calling than animal sacrifices.
Those animal sacrifices were only intended to point the way to the Savior, the life and the work of Jesus Christ. So Jesus gave us the command to love God and to love others. We've got to get away from the gospel of sin management. Christianity is not about being good little boys and girls and obeying all the rules. It's about drawing near to our Savior and living lives that are more in harmony with God's design. Life just works better when we do.
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Have you ever watched a loggerhead turtle walk or crawl on the beach? Those big flippers don't work very well on the sand. They can move, but they're slow and clumsy and pretty inefficient. Last week my wife and I were on a catamaran cruise in the Bahamas. I was doing my morning exercise by swimming up and down on the beach. I had my goggles on so I could see under the water, and all of a sudden I saw a huge loggerhead turtle on my right side. His shell was probably four foot long.
He swam right in front of me. His flippers weren't clumsy. He was gliding along majestically and effortlessly. It was beautiful. He seemed comfortable maintaining about five foot distance from me, and every time I tried to swim up closer, he just gave his flippers a little flap, and he could effortlessly swim much faster than I could. You see, a loggerhead turtle is designed to live in the water. They can move along in the land, but they're much more at home in the water.
The same is true with us. When we live our lives without loving God and loving others, we're like the loggerhead turtle on the sand. We can make some progress, but it's not what we're designed to do. If we want success in life, we're better off putting Jesus' admonition to love one another to heart. When God tells us to do something, he has our well being in mind. With the eleventh commandment, Jesus isn't adding another rule to a long list of
Burdensome demands that need to be obeyed, otherwise he'll have to punish us. Is Jesus once again explaining the way life is designed to operate? It's the way things are. That's just the way it is. When parents tell their kids something like, look both ways before crossing the street, stay away from drugs, or choose your friends carefully, they're saying those things because they know the outcome those choices produce. They have their kids' well-being in mind.
Jesus knows how important this is. God is a relational being, and we're created in that great image. We're wired for relationships. It's in our DNA. So with the command to love one another, Jesus is simply encouraging his disciples and us to live our lives in harmony with our God given natural design. Jesus, of course, understands that it's definitely not good for the man or woman to be alone. The truth in that statement is pretty much self evident.
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we all sort of instinctively know that close loving relationships are part of our design and they're good for us. God honors our free will choices, and because of that, we're free to take his advice or ignore it. As we're about to see, the consequences of ignoring this particular admonition to love one another can be devastating to our health and well-being. In order to illustrate how profoundly loving relationships impact our health and well-being, I want to highlight
Just a few of the things that can happen when we're not in harmony with that design. Let's start off with one of the more extreme examples. Probably the worst form of incarceration is solitary confinement. Prisoners that spend twenty two to twenty four hours a day alone in a room the size of a parking space experience all kinds of rapid decline, both physically and mentally emotionally. Physically, their chances of having high blood pressure triples.
In a study done in California prisons, they found that 48% of prisoners in solitary confinement had high blood pressure, compared to only 17% of prisoners in maximum security general population units. The suicide rate for prisoners in solitary confinement has been documented as more than five times higher than that of the general prison population. Chronic oscillation-induced stress leads to a measurable decrease in the size of the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is the part of the brain that governs memory formation, spatial awareness, and mood regulation. The damage caused by solitary confinement doesn't magically resolve when the prisoners get released. When prisoners are transitioned from total isolation back to high stimulus environments, either the general prison population or the outside world, they experience sensory hypersensitivity. Normal sounds like the closing of a car door or
or starting the engine can feel physically painful and terrifying. The discomfort that released inmates experience can lead to withdrawing from society and they can develop agoraphobia and experience chronic PTSD. Now of course the most important loving relationship we'll ever have is the one we have with our Heavenly Father. I went over that in the last episode, episode number two thirteen. It's also very important that children have a loving relationship with their earthly fathers.
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Kids who grow up without a biological father in the home suffer a great deal of harm. On a physical level, kids that grow up in a fatherless home experience accelerated aging. A landmark study published in the journal Pediatrics examined salivary telomere length. Now telomeres are the protective caps at the end of our chromosomes that add they act a lot like shoelaces for our chromosomes. By age nine,
Children who experienced loss of a father due to separation, divorce, incarceration or death had fourteen percent shorter telomeres on average than children with present fathers. That's pretty amazing. Shorter telomeres in childhood are a stark biomarker for chronic stress and are predictive of cardiovascular disease, immune dysfunction, and premature mortality in adulthood.
Living in a father absent home is statistically correlated with poor metabolic health outcomes. Children raised without an active father figure are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese. The physical vulnerabilities associated with an absent father can begin before birth. Infant health data demonstrates that a lack of parental support during pregnancy correlates with higher rates of low birth weight and premature births. Furthermore,
Infants born into father absent environments face an increased risk of infant mortality. A father's involved presence offers a protective physical buffering that provides benefits to both the mother and the newborn. So that's what happens to expectant mothers, newborn babies, and young children when the crucial father figure relationship is absent. But what about the other end of our lifespans?
What happens to elderly people who experience loneliness and social isolation? Social isolation is the objective lack of relationships and social contact. It's literally being isolated from others. Loneliness is the subjective, distressing feeling of being alone. You can be in a room with a hundred people in it and still feel lonely. In the United States, roughly one in four adults aged sixty five and older are socially isolated.
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And up to 43% of adults aged 60 and older report feeling lonely. The risk of premature death from social isolation is so severe that it actively rivals well-established clinical risk factors like smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, and physical inactivity. Robust data from the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and Medicine, that's NASAM, and the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC.
Say that social isolation is associated with a 29% increased risk of all-cause mortality that's dying from any cause. And loneliness is even worse. Chronic subjective loneliness is linked to a 45% increased risk of death and a 59% increased risk of functional decline in older adults. When a person experiences functional decline, it means their physical
Or cognitive capacity has worsened to the point where they can no longer care for themselves without assistance. And that frequently triggers a domino effect that leads to nursing home placement, a lower quality of life, and ultimately death. These people lose the social support that encourages healthy behaviors like eating well and exercising. Not only that, the chronic biological stress caused by loneliness accelerates muscle wasting, systemic inflammation,
And cognitive decay, all of which directly erode person's physical independence. For older adults with preexisting conditions, isolation is particularly fatal. For instance, loneliness among heart failure patients is associated with a 4x increased risk of death. That's a 400% increased risk of dying. As well as a 68% increased risk of hospitalization, and hospitals are dangerous places.
Here's a term I want everybody in the natural nation, everyone that's a regular listener of this show to be familiar with. It's itrogenic causes. Itrogenic causes are deaths in hospitals from preventable medical errors, adverse drug interactions, surgical mistakes, and hospital acquired infections. Now this is really huge. This is a shocking study. In twenty sixteen, a patient safety study done at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was published in the British Medical Journal.
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The analysis lasted eight years and they looked at medical death rates. They calculated that more than two hundred fifty thousand deaths per year, roughly nine and a half percent of all US deaths are caused by itrogenic causes or medical errors. If the CDC formally tracked medical errors as an independent category, that would make itrogenic causes, doctor induced deaths, the third leading cause of death in the United States, right behind heart disease and cancer.
Is that not astounding? You're not going to hear hospitals bragging about that statistic. That's one of the biggest reasons I say at the top of every show that I want to help you stay out of the doctor's office and age gracefully. The more visits we have to a doctor's office, the more likely it is that we'll one day end up in a hospital, and hospitals are dangerous places. We're always better off not needing their services. Loneliness and social isolation are
Dramatically increase our risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. According to the Landmark Nasim Consensus Report that I just mentioned, objective social isolation associated with an approximately 50% increased risk of developing dementia. A meta-analysis, which was a comprehensive analysis found by the National Institute of Aging, the NIA, tracked over 600,000 participants across 21 distinct longitudinal studies.
They found that feeling lonely increases the overall risk of dementia by 31%. Beyond mortality and brain health, a lack of social connection severely impacts the cardiovascular system. Poor social relationships are associated with a 29% increased risk of coronary heart disease, and isolated or lonely older adults experience a 32% increased risk of stroke. And it doesn't end there.
Loneliness is strongly tied to significantly higher rates of clinical depression, severe anxiety, and suicidal ideation in older populations. yeah, it's definitely not good for the man or woman to be alone. All right, I know there was lot of statistics, but I just felt like it was necessary to include that just to show you how really significant loneliness and social isolation is. All right.
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So far I've talked about a few of the bad things that can happen when we ignore the biblical admonition to love one another. Now let's briefly talk about some of the good things that can happen. Of course, by avoiding those things that I've already mentioned, we take ourselves out of those high risk categories for accelerated aging, early death, obesity, muscle wasting, and mental decline. And that alone is is significant. Are there any studies that show the benefit to putting Jesus' words to love one another into practice?
Of course there are. Being married and staying married has a powerful positive impact on our health outcomes. I've talked about two of the more significant studies in my book, The Christian's Guide to Holistic Health. The first one is a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in August of twenty eleven. Research has found that married people have significantly longer lifespans than single people. Those researches found that lifetime single men.
die up to seventeen years younger than married men. And women didn't fare much better. Single women die up to fifteen years younger. And that study includes all marriages, not just good ones. Now in a related study published in Harvard Women's Health Watch, published in December 2010, those researchers found that a lack of strong relationships increased the risk of premature death from all causes, that's all cause mortality, by 50%.
That's roughly comparable to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day and greater than obesity and physical inactivity. That's worth repeating. A lack of relational connectedness is on par with smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and worse for our health than obesity and sedentary lifestyle. Drop the mic. It's nice to see modern science catching up with what the Bible has been teaching for thousands of years.
It's not good for the man to be alone. And no one's ever going to invent a pill that cures loneliness. It's time the health and wellness industry started recognizing the biblical encouragement to pursue relationships. Now, this is a big part of the reason why I often say in the show that if you go to the doctor's office and after a seven minute visit, walk out with a prescription in hand for a few pills that are designed to relieve your symptoms, and that doctor doesn't ask you one question about your sleep.
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Your nutrition or your relationships, you don't have a doctor, you have a dealer. Being in loving connected relationships is a huge part of pursuing health and well being at all levels, spirit, mind, and body. One of the more tangible ways we can demonstrate our love for others is through philanthropy. The medical and physiological literature is clear. Philanthropy, whether through monetary donations, volunteering time, or nothing.
Direct community involvement triggers measurable biological changes that improve physical health, boost mental well-being, and extend lifespan. When we give, our bodies undergo specific physiological shifts across several key systems. For instance, the physical benefits of giving extend directly to heart health and overall longevity. A well-known longitudinal study from Carnegie Millen University
Found that older adults who volunteered at least 200 hours a year, that's roughly four hours a week, were forty percent less likely to develop high blood pressure than non-volunteers. That's even after controlling for baseline health status. There's something called the helper's high. That's where the reward center of our brains lights up and directly mirrors physical rewards. Brain imaging studies show that making a charitable donation or helping someone activates the mesolimbic pathway.
That's the brain's core reward system. That releases a cascade of dopamine, which governs motivation and pleasure, and endorphins, creating the mild euphoric sensation that many people call the helper's high. And there's more. Philanthropic behavior prompts the pituitary grain to release oxytocin, the bonding hormone. Oxytocin is often called the cuddle chemical or the love hormone. Oxytocin reduces vascular resistance, in other words, the friction.
That the blood flow through the R arteries causes. It lowers blood pressure and it counteracts the physiological effects of anxiety. Sustained charitable engagement is linked to higher baseline levels of serotonin, which helps to regulate mood, sleep, and emotional stability. There's a stress buffering effect on mortality as well. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health demonstrated that while major stress increases overall mortality risk.
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That increase was virtually eliminated in individuals who routinely helped friends and neighbors or family members. Giving acts as a physical buffer against stress-induced wear and tear on the heart. Chronic stress floods the body with cortisol and drives systemic inflammation. And if you've listened to the show at all, you know that systemic inflammation is responsible for accelerated aging and all kinds of chronic degenerative diseases. Philanthropy,
disrupts that pathway. Engaging in prosocial behavior downregulates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight reflex, and that results in lower cortisol levels. It lowers our stress. Lower chronic stress directly correlates with reduced levels of pro-inflammatory markers like interleukin 6 or C reactor protein. And those are two of the more prominent important markers that gauge systemic inflammation.
Keeping these markers low reduces the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and reduces autoimmune flare-ups. So my advice is find a charity or a local philanthropic organization that that speaks to your heart, something that really resonates with you, and get involved. Volunteer your time. You can you can you know, when you show up to these places and say, Hey, I'd like to get involved.
they're gonna they're gonna roll out the red carpet and say, Yeah, we we would love to have you. And you'll be establishing social connection with like-minded people, and you can, you know, often find some very strong relationships that way. So participating in charitable organizations and philanthropic behavior is very, very good for our health, and I encourage you to get involved. Now we already talked about how bad loneliness and social isolation are for the elderly. Well
Getting involved in philanthropy creates structured, meaningful social interactions. Those interactions are especially important for older adults. Active volunteering provides physical, social, and mental stimulation, and that helps maintain brain volume and executive function, which helps delay the onset of cognitive decline and dementia. yeah, it's definitely not good for the man to be alone.
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Are you beginning to see how rich the Bible is with information for our health and wellness? When we understand that when God tells us to do something, it's for our benefit, and when he tells us to avoid something, it's for our protection, the Bible becomes a plethora of useful information for our health and well-being. For instance, let's take Joshua 1 8. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.
For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Are there some implications in that passage for our health and well being? You bet there are. Would you classify maintaining your mental acuity and physical independence into your eighties and nineties a success? I would. So when Jesus says a new commandment I give to you, love one another as I have loved you, he doesn't say do it because if you don't, you're going to experience accelerated aging, muscle wasting,
More heart disease, cognitive decline, and premature death, he just says, do it my way. You won't be sorry. Okay, so I think we've established that a lack of relationships produces worse health outcomes and connected loving relationships are beneficial to our health. Now I don't want to just describe the problem. I want to give you some actionable advice to help improve your love for others and your relational well-being.
Now, there's a lot to be said here, and I'm going to have more to say on our mental emotional side of things on pillars number five and six, victory over limiting beliefs and practicing emotional intelligence. But for now, I want to drill down on one super important aspect of loving relationships. So here's the relational advice that I promised at the top of the episode. If we want to have friends, we've got to first be a friend.
It's in our fallen nature to be focused on ourselves, and that's not very relational. Here's a quote from Daniel Eyman's book, Heal Your Brain, Heal Your Life. When you're eighteen, you worry about what everybody thinks of you. When you're forty, you don't give a damn what anybody thinks of you. When you're sixty, you realize nobody's thinking about you at all. They're thinking about themselves. Now Daniel Lehman wasn't the first person to express that sentiment. In nineteen thirty six,
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A newspaper column by the name of Olin Miller wrote You probably wouldn't worry so much about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. So in order to be a friend, we've got to get over our selfishness and become more curious about other people. The Bible has plenty of advice for us for loving others. One of the key teachings on this topic of getting over ourselves and putting our focus on others is Philippians chapter two verses three and four.
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interest of others. Now this is easier said than done. Our flesh or our old selfish sinful nature needs to be dealt with because it doesn't go down without a fight. Now in previous episodes I've talked about how human nature got warped or perverted when Adam and Eve fell from grace.
When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, that was Adam's animating spirit, and that spirit was based on truth, love, and trust. But when Adam disobeyed God, his spirit got corrupted into one based on lies, fear, and selfishness. It's that warped selfish nature that many Christians call the flesh. Our flesh is self-centered and it leads to all kinds of fear-based, self-protected behaviors.
Just like Adam did when he told God, I realized I was naked and I was afraid, so I hid. So now that we've been saved, we've got to unlearn those behaviors that are based in fear and selfishness and embrace God's way of doing things. We set out to become more Christlike. I already mentioned at the top of the episode, Matthew chapter 20, verse 28, Jesus says, The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Now that's a tall order. That's something we can strive for. That's that's perfection, but perfection is not attainable this side of heaven. But we can try to move in that direction. One of the more important things to understand in that process is that becoming more like Christ starts with a fundamental change in our identity. We've got to understand this. When we have a genuine born-again experience, we don't just get a tune-up. We're transformed. And it's not just
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Into a new and improved version of our old selves, we are fundamentally a new creation. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, the new is here. When the Bible refers to our hearts, it's talking about our core identity. It's who we are at the deepest level. Your heart is you, my heart is me. Now here's an important truth.
When we come to Christ, we get new hearts. Ezekiel thirty six twenty six says, I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. That's our new identity, and our new hearts are good because they're not infected with fear and selfishness. It God wants us to live from that new fundamental core identity, that new good heart. That heart, or that spirit, is based in love and trust in God.
But here's the tricky part. We're all still operating from habit patterns and learned behaviors that were established before we came to Christ. Sanctification is described in the Bible like changing clothes, taking off the worn out, corrupt self, and putting on the new nature fashioned by God. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 23 through 24 say this.
You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Putting off the old self and putting on the new doesn't happen in an instant. It's a process. And sometimes we struggle with that process, right? Do I have a witness? Yeah, I know I'm not alone here.
God, of course, anticipated our struggle with this, so he gave us some great advice. I already mentioned Philippians 2 3. Do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, both with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. So what's the secret sauce to getting over our selfishness? Putting on humility and regarding others as more important than ourselves. Now that doesn't mean that other people are more valuable than we are.
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The admonition is to regard them as if they were. That's the secret sauce to having loving, connected human relationships. We've got to get the focus off ourselves and focus on other people's needs, wants, and desires. In order to be a friend, we should become curious about other people's lives. People are interesting, they really are. But sadly, for most of us, and you can put me first in line here.
We have a hard time being curious about other people. If we want to have friends, we should be asking questions about the details of other people's lives. We've got to get curious. If we're genuinely curious about other people, we won't stop with one question. The last thing we want to do is ask a single vague question like, so how are the kids? And then move on to what we really want to talk about. People will see right through that.
It'll be super easy for them to see that we really don't care about their kids. We're just making a half-hearted effort at being polite. If we ask someone about their kids, we need to pause and listen and ask genuine follow-up questions. If we're truly curious and really listening, there will be logical follow-up questions. If you practice that kind of curiosity, I promise you there will be relational benefits that fall.
Because most people, even genuine born again believers, don't understand the depth of their self centeredness, this style of communication what I'm talking about here is actually pretty rare. When we practice genuine curiosity and active listening, people will take notice. They may not even be able to pinpoint why they enjoy talking with us, but they will respond positively. So put on some humility, get curious about others and get
Ask follow-up questions and listen intently. So again, there's a lot more to be said in this topic, and I'll be covering more in this series, but I think that's enough for one episode. The next episode we're going to take a short break from the nine pillars series because I've got a great guest I want you to meet. His name is Dr. Dusty Hess. He's a functional medicine practitioner and he's a follower of Jesus Christ. We had a great conversation about faith and health. It's really awesome, and I know you're going to really enjoy hearing from.
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If you're enjoying this content, don't just keep it to yourself. Don't be selfish. Be relational and share the show with a like-minded friend. I'll bet they'll thank you for it. So that's it for now. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you. Go out there and live abundantly. I'll talk with you next time. Be blessed.
