Rest for the Mind = Health for the Brain
Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg, at his eighty-fifth birthday party, January 6, 1963
Richard didn’t want to come see me. He was by all accounts a high-functioning, successful executive for a Fortune 500 business. His entire life he had succeeded in whatever he put his mind to. He had an MBA, graduating with honors, and was able to secure a job with a desirable company after graduation. He worked long hours and produced outstanding results and over his career was rewarded with bonuses, promotions, and advancements. Yet, in his fifties he was in my office and was not happy to be there.
A typical day for Richard went like this:
Weekends were not much better. While he would sleep in a couple of hours longer, he would spend much of his time working on his computer or doing chores around the house. Very little time was spent in simple relaxation and mental rest, allowing himself to unwind and lay aside the burdens of life. Even when he went to church on Sundays (he didn’t go every week), he had his smart device with him and would read or do business on his device while there.
Richard’s life is typical of how many Westerners live: overworked and little time for simple relaxation and rest—not sleep for the body, but rest for the mind.
In my practice the vast majority of my patients identify themselves as practicing Christians. Yet most of these individuals do not get regular rest. Those who attend church typically set aside the burdens of living only for a few hours on Sunday mornings. As soon as church is over, they go right back to the grind. My patients almost always tell me they would like to have a day off each week just to relax and rest, but they cannot afford it—there is simply too much to do. Working five days a week and having kids in school who are engaged in numerous extracurricular activities, they feel obligated to use their day of worship for catching up on shopping, housecleaning, laundry, and yard work. They feel like rats in a wheel—a wheel that never ends and running a race with no finish line.
Do you ever feel this way?
Research has documented that overwork, working long hours without adequate time for mental rest, increases physical and mental health problems. A meta-analysis of over six hundred thousand adults found that overwork is associated with increased risk for heart attacks and strokes.1 Death due to work-related stress has become so common in Japan that their culture even has a name for it—Karoshi. This problem had become so pervasive in Japan and disability claims had become so common that in 2002 the Japanese government released guidelines on limiting work hours.2 Not only does overwork and failure to get proper mental rest contribute to heart attacks and strokes but also such persistent mental stress alters DNA expression and increases cancer risk. A study that examined the impact on DNA of work-related stress and perceived overwork found, particularly in women, that these resulted in increased damage to DNA, increasing the risk of cancer.3
Maintaining One’s Health
I see many good-hearted people who have burned themselves out because they simply don’t know how to say no—how to set boundaries, how to take time to rest.
One of the traps that caring people fall into is doing too much. Many of my Christian patients get tricked into exhaustion because they fear being selfish or that any action they take to care for themselves before others will be viewed as selfishness. So they never say no but instead take on more and more until they are burned out.
Such individuals have failed to understand how reality works. This is the law of rest-oration. When a finite being expends a resource, that being must rest and recover in order to assimilate more of the resource to expend again. After pitching a no-hitter a major league pitcher must rest before he is ready to pitch another game. After expending mental and emotional energy we must rest and rejuvenate before we are ready to expend more; to do otherwise leads to exhaustion. We cannot care for anyone else if we ourselves are incapacitated. Parents can only give to their children when they are in a position to give. If a parent is in an ICU on a ventilator they are not able to give to their children. If a pastor wants to nurture his congregation he must be in a healthy enough state to do so. Thus, the first principle in all altruistic activity is to maintain the health of the giver.
Even Christ took time away from the masses for rest, rejuvenation, and time in meditation and conversation with his Father. Healthy self-care is not selfish but necessary in order to keep oneself in the best condition for the maximum benefit and usefulness one can provide—in whatever activity one chooses to engage.
By understanding this principle we can gain some insight into why the Bible prescribes a weekly Sabbath rest—a weekly twenty-four-hour period to lay aside the burdens and stresses of life and rest. This rest is not the physiological sleep our bodies need each day but the rest our minds need to unwind, decompress, and rejuvenate. This type of rest is like a weekly vacation in time (a sabbatical), a day each week when a person can set aside their burdens, work, and responsibilities and rest without guilt, without feeling lazy, and without a sense of shirking one’s duties because one realizes this is time—like sleep for the body—that is necessary to maintain one’s own health and wellness. This time of rest for the mind, this period of rejuvenation can be a time filled with activities that further recharge and repair the body and mind.
Such activities include spending time with family. Studies show that individuals with close family ties have lower stress levels, solve problems better, and have overall better health and fewer mental health problems than individuals with fractured and strained family relations.
And science documents that vacations with spiritual emphasis are physiologically healing and slow the aging process. A recent study of 102 women ages thirty to sixty found that a five-day vacation with meditation improved stress regulation, immune function, and telomerase activity (which lengthens telomeres and slows aging) and had other positive cellular changes. These changes were immediate, and for those who continued meditation the benefits continued ten months later. The vacation and meditation turned down inflammation and calmed the immune system.4
When people leave their home and go away the change in environment allows them to relax, let their defensive posture down, and reduce their stress response, all of which impact genetic expression and cellular function. One can enjoy a weekly Sabbath rest at home by engaging in walks in nature, visitation with family and friends, and worship of God. Prepare the home before the beginning of the rest period by cleaning and organizing, removing and reducing stressful life cues (TV and electronic media are turned off, schoolwork is put away, etc.), and bringing out environmental cues that signal calm and rest (candles, special foods with heartwarming aromas, music reserved for the day of mental rest, etc.). Such a weekly vacation in time can promote profound health benefits.
Weekly Rest and Aging
Dan Buettner traveled the world seeking out the places where people lived the longest, the places with the highest concentration of individuals living over one hundred years of age. He termed these areas blue zones and authored the bestselling book The Blue Zones. He identified lessons from all the blue zones that contribute to longevity and health. The only blue zone in the United States is Loma Linda, California, which is home to a high concentration of Seventh-day Adventists. One of the lessons noted on the Blue Zones website that contributes to longevity among the Adventists is a weekly Sabbath rest. The Blue Zones website states:
Find a sanctuary in time to decompress. . . . Observance of the Sabbath strictly occurs from Friday to Saturday night, giving Adventists a weekly time to focus on family, friends, God and nature.5
The weekly day of rest provides multiple health benefits. It is a time to not only mentally decompress but also get out into nature, visit with family and friends, and spend time in spiritual development. All of which slow aging and lengthen life.
Nature and the Body
Recent scientific research has documented significant health benefits to getting out into nature. Spending time in more natural, less urban environments has been demonstrated to reduce stress, improve mood, lower aggression, decrease hostility, and overall improve both mental and physical health. A study of 498 Japanese individuals evaluated the impact of walking in the forest versus a routine day. The study found hostility and depression scores decreased significantly, and liveliness scores increased significantly on the forest day compared with the control day.6
Further research found that when Japanese men spent three days and two nights in a forest, not only did their subjective emotional sense of well-being improve but also their heart rate variability improved, and their bodies experienced a shift in neurological stress tone. Their parasympathetic activity (which governs rest) increased and their sympathetic activity (which governs the stress response) decreased. Additionally, their stress hormone levels (salivary cortisol) and heart rates decreased markedly while in the forest setting.7 A study of over eleven thousand Danes confirmed the association between time spent in nature and improved physical and mental health.8
Research has demonstrated not only the health benefits of spending time in outdoor natural settings but also that such settings seem to improve learning. In Great Britain over one hundred schools have been established that operate in outdoor forest settings. Observation of students from these schools noted improvements in the children’s confidence, motivation and concentration, language and communication, and physical skills.9
Noise Pollution
There are multiple reasons why time relaxing in nature is more beneficial than time in more urban settings. One of the reasons is that urban centers are noisy, and noise greater than 65 dB has been associated with a host of health-related problems. Our brains are wired to alert us to potential dangers. When you hear a loud bang you startle before you even think about what just happened. The brain is wired so that loud sounds directly activate its fear/stress circuitry to alert us to potential danger. While this is helpful in natural settings where loud sounds are rare, in urban settings where noise is constant this automated pathway results in ongoing chronic activation of our brain’s stress circuitry, even if we are not consciously fearful or stressed.10 Thus, chronic noise exposure does result in increased stress activation with subsequent increased inflammation and increased rates of heart attacks and early deaths.11 A study that examined the impact of traffic noise on preschoolers (ages three to seven) found that children who attended preschool in zones with high traffic noise (>60 dB) had higher mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure than children in quiet areas.12 And a study evaluating the impact of aircraft noise on learning found that chronic aircraft-noise exposure was associated with higher levels of noise annoyance and poorer reading comprehension measured by standardized scales.13 Thus not only is health impacted by noise (>60 dB) but learning is also impaired.
The Balance of Electrons
Another factor in why getting back to nature may promote health is the electrical modulation that nature has on the human body and brain. Doctors have known for many years that the human organism has not only biological processes (DNA, RNA, proteins) but also electrical ones. When a doctor administers an ECG (electrocardiogram) he is recording the electrical signal patterns of the patient’s heart. An EEG (electroencephalogram) is a measure of the electrical activity of the brain. Our bodies are bioelectric machines and as such are subject to electrical forces. The human brain responds to external electrical signals. One of the most effective treatments for major depression is electroconvulsive therapy; more recently strong electric magnets have been demonstrated to be effective for treating depression in persons who have not found success using multiple antidepressant medications.14
Our bodies suffer when imbalances in natural design occur, whether they are nutritional (scurvy caused by lack of vitamin C), hormonal (hypothyroidism—too low thyroid hormone), circadian (jet lag or night-shift work), or, as recent research suggests, electrical.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, due to the mass production and use of electrical-obstructing materials (rubber, plastic, etc.) and modern living conditions, vast numbers of humans in Western societies have essentially been unplugged from the earth. The earth is a massive bioelectric sphere that constantly gives off electrons, most spectacularly seen in blazing bolts of lightning. When human beings come into direct contact with the earth—walking barefoot in the grass, swimming in the ocean, touching a tree—the individual is “grounded” and electrical balance is achieved. Research has demonstrated that coming into direct contact with the earth with one’s skin results in immediate changes in the electrical condition of the human body and restores a healthy natural balance. This process has come to be called earthing. Earthing has been shown to generate immediate changes in EEGs, surface electromyography (SEMG), and somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs).15 But this contact needs to be with electrically conductive materials such as moist soil, grass, trees, and plants and not most man-made surfaces such as sidewalks, asphalt, and rubber-containing playground surfaces.
Research has demonstrated that daily contact with the earth provides the body with electrons that help the body establish and maintain its normal circadian rhythms and activates the body’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant enzymes, thereby reducing free radicals and damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS).16 It is thought that the influx of electrons into the body by routine contact with the earth results in reduction and elimination of damaging oxidative chemicals.17 Earthing results in measurable improvements in immune response, reduction in cytokines and other inflammatory markers, and improvement in recovery after injury or heavy exertion.18 Contact with the earth also results in measurable improvements in blood flow throughout the body, with subsequent improvement in oxygenation.19 Other studies have demonstrated that earthing or “grounding” people so that they experience this daily electrical reset results in improvement in sleep, reduction in pain, normalization of cortisol levels, less fatigue, better energy, lower blood pressure, and reductions in stress as measured by EEGs, electromyograms, and blood-volume pulse.20
Not only does spending time in nature seem to provide multiple health benefits but also exercise conducted outdoors rather than indoors appears to have a more robust health benefit. A twin study revealed that when physical activity was conducted outdoors it resulted in significantly lower rates of depression than when exercise occurred indoors.21 A multistudy meta-analysis of over twelve hundred individuals found that outdoor exercise resulted in substantial improvement in self-esteem and mood.22 And multiple studies have demonstrated beneficial differences in physical responses such as heart rate, blood pressure, autonomic response, and endocrine markers from outdoor exercise.23
At least one study has documented that improved autonomic response can be achieved with indoor exercise if one views scenes of nature while exercising.24 This demonstrates the significant impact our thoughts, minds, beliefs, and mental attitudes have on our physiology. (In the next chapter we will explore the impact our beliefs have on physical and mental health and the aging process.)
Cheerfulness Is Good Medicine
As we discussed in chapter 8, it is not just the specific activity that matters but the mental attitude one has during the activity that is of utmost importance. Exercise with a negative mental attitude can actually cause increased stress cascades and worsen rather than improve health.
Likewise, it is not sufficient to merely avoid work one day in seven to experience health benefits; one must do so with a positive mental attitude. Weekly rest performed from a sense of obligation—under some sense of religious requirement in which the mental attitude is one of restriction, coercion, or force—damages instead of rejuvenates. Mental attitudes that incite fear and anxiety cheat people from experiencing the benefits that a weekly rest would otherwise provide. Imagine you go on vacation but in your mind you believe you are being imprisoned against your will. No matter the location, such a mental construct will incite fear and anxiety and damage your health, not improve it. So too if persons belong to religious groups that make their day of rest obligatory, a restriction of liberty, a day in which behaviors are monitored with fear of condemnation. Rather than experiencing a health benefit, their health is potentially damaged.
This is why the Bible teaches that genuine benefit from Sabbath observance occurs only for those who experience the day as a delight (Isa. 58:13–14)! And recent science confirms the ancient wisdom of Solomon that a cheerful attitude is good medicine, but a negative attitude undermines wellness (Prov. 17:22).
Researchers have found that those who laugh regularly have significantly reduced risk of heart attacks. In fact, cardiologists at the University of Maryland found that patients hospitalized with heart attacks had a history of being 40 percent less likely to laugh than persons not suffering heart attacks.25 Laughter has been documented to improve vascular function and release of nitric oxide, which helps dilate blood vessels and improve blood flow. Conversely, mental stress, worry, and anxiety degrade nitric oxide and contribute to vascular constriction and reduced blood flow. Laughter improved blood flow by 20 percent whereas stress decreased blood flow by 35 percent.26 Other research found that in individuals who had suffered a heart attack, humor reduced recurrence. In fact, those in the humor group had fewer arrhythmias, lower blood pressure, lower urinary and plasma stress hormone levels, less use of nitroglycerin for angina, and a markedly lower incidence of recurrent heart attacks when compared to those not in the humor group.27 Additionally, regular laughter has been documented to improve the body’s immune system and reduce the risk of infections.28 Yes, our mental attitude really does matter!
LEARNING POINTS
ACTION PLAN: THINGS TO DO