Do It With Your Might. Which Is the Great Commandment? How to Avoid the Obesity-Related Plastic Chemical BPA.

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Do It With Your Might

Ecclesiastes 9:10

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.

“Solomon’s writings repeatedly encourage diligence and hard work as necessary ingredients of success. (For more on this, see our article “How to Be Successful.”) Here the wise king adds the perspective that this life is short, and so we must apply our full efforts now. This passage may have been on the apostle Paul’s mind when he wrote, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” (Colossians 3:23).

Many churches dispute Solomon’s assertion that “the dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5) and that there is no knowledge or wisdom in the grave. The common teaching is that man has an immortal soul. But is this what the Bible teaches? For more on this, see our article “Immortal Soul.””  From: https://lifehopeandtruth.com/bible/blog/do-it-with-your-might/

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Which Is the Great Commandment?

Matthew 22:35-38

“Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.”

“The lawyer seemingly intended this as a trick question with many possible answers that would be considered wrong by those experts who had ranked the laws differently. But Jesus Christ cut to the core of all the laws to identify what is truly most important. Loving God with all our being means we will seek to please Him and do everything else He asks us to do.

This first, great commandment summarizes the first four of the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:1-11) where God explains how to love Him the way He wants to be loved. Human ideas of how to worship God may be well-intentioned, but to be assured we are pleasing God, we must worship and obey Him the way He wants us to. The first four Commandments, and the entire Bible, show us that way.”

Study more about how God wants us to love Him in our article “The Great Commandment.”   From: https://lifehopeandtruth.com/bible/blog/which-is-the-great-commandment/?

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Which Is the Great Commandment? Part 2

Matthew 22:39-40

“And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

“After telling us to love God with everything we’ve got, Jesus Christ gives the essential key to human relationships. Selfishness destroys relationships, and this love is the antidote. Loving others as ourselves means we will consider how our actions affect others. This is related to what is often called the Golden Rule: “Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

In the same way the great commandment summarized the first four of the 10 Commandments, loving our neighbors summarizes and gives life to the last six (Exodus 20:12-17). These two great commandments expand out to the 10 Commandments, which can be magnified to reveal the essence of the whole Bible—the Law and the Prophets, along with the New Testament as well.”

Study more about God’s law in our series on the “10 Commandments.”

From: https://lifehopeandtruth.com/bible/blog/which-is-the-great-commandment-part-2/?

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How to Avoid the Obesity-Related Plastic Chemical BPA

“Ninety percent of our exposure to the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) comes from certain components of our diet.

Transcript of YouTube: https://youtu.be/KIBsIQu0zNo

“The purported link between hormone-disrupting plastics chemicals, like BPA, and obesity was initially based, in part, on observations that the rise in chemical exposure seemed to coincide with the rise of the obesity epidemic—with graphs like these. But, maybe that’s just a coincidence. There’s lots of other changes over the last half century—like an increase in fast food consumption and watching TV—that would seem to be simpler explanations.

But why are our pets getting fatter, too? Fido isn’t drinking more soda. Of course, the more we watch Seinfeld reruns, the less we may walk the dog. But what about our cats? Well, maybe we’re giving both them and our kids a few too many treats? That would seem an easier explanation than some pervasive obesity-causing chemical in the environment building up in the pet and person food chains.

But how do we explain this? A study of over 20,000 animals from 24 populations, and we’re all getting fatter. The odds that this could happen just by chance is like one in ten million. Large and sustained increases in body weight across the board—even in animals without access to vending machines, or getting [less] physical education at school. So, maybe some environmental pollutant is involved.

Of course, we’re exposed to a whole cocktail of new chemicals besides BPA. But the reason researchers have zeroed in on it is because of experiments like this—showing that BPA can accelerate the production of new fat cells, in a petri dish at least. But this was at more than a thousand times the concentration found in most people’s bloodstream.

We didn’t know if the same thing happened at typical levels, until now. Most people have between 1 to 20 nanomoles in their blood, and even at 1 nanomole, a significant boost in human fat cell production. So, even low levels may be a problem. But, again, that’s in a petri dish. What about in people?

Why not just measure the body weights of a population exposed to the chemical, compared to a population not exposed to the chemical? Because there is virtually no unexposed population; the stuff is everywhere. Okay, then, how about those with higher levels compared to those with lower levels? Good thinking, which is what researchers at NYU did, and the amount of BPA flowing through the bodies of children and adolescents was significantly associated with obesity.

But since it was a cross-sectional study—a snapshot in time—we don’t know which came first. Maybe the [high] BPA levels didn’t lead to obesity; maybe the obesity led to high BPA levels, since the chemical is stored in fat. Or, maybe BPA is just a marker for the same kinds of processed foods that can make you fat.

What we need are prospective studies where we measure exposure, and then follow people over time. But we never had anything like that, though, until now. And indeed, higher levels of BPA and some other plastics chemicals were significantly associated with faster weight gain over the subsequent decade. Okay, so, how can we stay away from the stuff?

Though we inhale some from dust, and some through our skin, touching BPA-laden receipts, 90% of exposure is from our diet. How do you tell? You have people fast, and drink water only out of glass bottles for a few days, and their BPA levels drop as much as tenfold. Fasting isn’t very sustainable, though.

What if you did a three-day fresh foods intervention, where they had families switch away from canned and processed foods for a few days? You can indeed get a significant drop in BPA exposure.

Or, you can do the experiment the other way—adding a serving of canned soup to people’s daily diet, and see a 1,000% rise in BPA levels in their urine, compared to a serving of soup prepared with fresh ingredients.

They used a ready-to-serve canned soup, which, in the largest survey of North American canned foods, has about 85% less BPA than condensed soups, which are even worse. But the worst of the worst appeared to be canned tuna.”

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.  From: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-avoid-the-obesity-related-plastic-chemical-bpa/

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