HEALTH DevotionAL

I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart. Ps. 40:8, NIV.

In 1863 the Seventh-day Adventist Church officially organized. That same year Ellen G. White received her first vision on the principles underlying health reform. These and subsequent instructions, confirmed by modern science in recent years, shaped the health practices of the church’s members. And all this began at a time when bloodletting and the almost indiscriminate use of powerful drugs were the tools of medicine, while the sciences of physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, and nutrition were in their infancy or had yet to emerge. The recommendations she made include:

• Reduce fat, especially animal fat. Now known to increase cholesterol, atherosclerosis, heart disease, and stroke.
• Use whole-grain wheat flour in breadmaking rather than the super-fine white flour then considered the best.
• Avoid overeating and being overweight, today recognized as public health problems.
• Use salt sparingly and avoid baking soda and powder in making bread. This given long before research showed their role in high blood pressure and chronic kidney failure.
• Breast-feed babies. This at a time when bottle feeding was becoming popular. Now science recognizes mother’s milk as the ideal nutrition for an infant.
• Use grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables to make the most healthful diet. Ellen White recommended this at a time when many ridiculed a vegetarian diet.

Recent research has shown that vegetarian diets provide desirable levels of unsaturated fat, generous amounts of complex carbohydrates, and an abundance of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, and other biologically active components. Such a diet protects against coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, and a variety of cancers. In 1993 the American Dietetic Association officially recognized in a position paper the adequacy and benefits of a vegetarian diet.

And what did Ellen White say of that first health reform vision in 1863? “I saw that it was a sacred duty to attend to our health.” Medical science confirms the strong connection between physical well-being and psychological well-being!

What adjustments should you make in your lifestyle to live up to how you know you should be living?

Used by permission of Health Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.