Bacon or Bananas?
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance. Prov. 1:5, NIV.
Three statements by Ellen White have intrigued me:
Each cell has the potential of generating electricity, if the voltage from the activity of the sodium-potassium pump that transfers the sodium out of the cell and potassium into the cell keeps the cell's battery charged. If a diet is too high in sodium chloride and too low in potassium, the sodium-potassium pump tends to slow, allowing the battery to run down not only in the cells of blood vessels but also in cells throughout the body. When the battery runs down, your electricity goes down, depleting your energy or vital force and making you hypertensive and susceptible to other diseases.
Dr. Norman Kaplan, one of the chief researchers in hypertension, says that hypertension problems are more closely related to low potassium levels than to high sodium.
Now contrast God's diet for His incredible human machine with humankind's diet in terms of the salt and potassium content. Bacon and ham are cured meats with three times as much sodium as potassium. Potato chips and processed foods all contain salt. But fruits (especially bananas and figs), vegetables, grains, seeds, and nuts contain hundreds of times more potassium than sodium. Exactly what your cells need to keep electrically charged!
If you want to feel young again, with vital energy surging through your veins, you've got to keep your cells' sodium-potassium pumps in good working order. You do that by avoiding humankind's sodium-filled foods and enjoying God's potassium-filled ones.
Bacon or bananas? I'll take a banana, thank you!
Think about what you regularly eat. How much potassium is your body getting to keep your sodium-potassium pumps working effectively to charge the sodium "batteries" in your cells?
Three statements by Ellen White have intrigued me:
- "Whatever disturbs the circulation of the electric currents in the nervous system lessens the strength of the vital powers, and the result is a deadening of the sensibilities of the mind" (Testimonies, vol. 2, p. 347).
- "If Adam, at his creation, had not been endowed with twenty times as much vital force as men now have, the race, with their present habits of living in violation of natural law, would have become extinct" (ibid., vol. 3, p. 138).
- "The system is vitalized by electrical force of the brain to resist disease" (ibid., p. 157).
Each cell has the potential of generating electricity, if the voltage from the activity of the sodium-potassium pump that transfers the sodium out of the cell and potassium into the cell keeps the cell's battery charged. If a diet is too high in sodium chloride and too low in potassium, the sodium-potassium pump tends to slow, allowing the battery to run down not only in the cells of blood vessels but also in cells throughout the body. When the battery runs down, your electricity goes down, depleting your energy or vital force and making you hypertensive and susceptible to other diseases.
Dr. Norman Kaplan, one of the chief researchers in hypertension, says that hypertension problems are more closely related to low potassium levels than to high sodium.
Now contrast God's diet for His incredible human machine with humankind's diet in terms of the salt and potassium content. Bacon and ham are cured meats with three times as much sodium as potassium. Potato chips and processed foods all contain salt. But fruits (especially bananas and figs), vegetables, grains, seeds, and nuts contain hundreds of times more potassium than sodium. Exactly what your cells need to keep electrically charged!
If you want to feel young again, with vital energy surging through your veins, you've got to keep your cells' sodium-potassium pumps in good working order. You do that by avoiding humankind's sodium-filled foods and enjoying God's potassium-filled ones.
Bacon or bananas? I'll take a banana, thank you!
Think about what you regularly eat. How much potassium is your body getting to keep your sodium-potassium pumps working effectively to charge the sodium "batteries" in your cells?
Used by permission of Health Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.
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