There is a nerve in your body that connects your brain directly to your heart, your lungs, and your gut. Scientists call it the vagus nerve. What it does when you worship will change how you think about praise. The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the human body. It runs from the brainstem all the way down through the neck, chest, and abdomen. It is the primary pathway of what researchers call the parasympathetic nervous system, the system responsible for rest, recovery, digestion, and immune function. When the vagus nerve is activated, heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, inflammation decreases, and the body shifts from survival mode into restoration mode. Researchers have identified three primary activators of the vagus nerve. Deep, rhythmic breathing. Cold water exposure. Singing. Not listening to music. Singing. The act of producing sustained vocal tones activates the vagus nerve directly through the muscles of the throat and the vibration in the chest cavity. Psalm 100:1-2 says make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. The Hebrew word for joyful noise is rua, meaning to shout, to raise a battle cry, to produce a loud, sustained vocal sound. God did not design corporate worship as a warm-up for the sermon. He designed it as a full-body, neurologically active, physiologically restorative event that shifts your entire system from survival mode into the mode your body needs to heal, receive, and function at its highest level. When you lift your voice in genuine worship, you are not just expressing gratitude. You are activating a nerve God designed that tells every organ in your body it is safe to restore. Your voice was built to heal you. Use it. Dr. Zac Breckenridge

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A remarkable study looking at natural alternatives to medications found that compared to a systemic steroid, a combination of honey and coffee was superior in reducing symptoms associated with a post-infectious cough (PPC). PPC is a cough that remains after a common cold or an upper respiratory tract infection for more than three weeks, and in some cases as long as several months. Conventional treatment may involve any number of powerful drugs, many of which have serious side effects, including codeine and dextromethorphan (so-called centrally acting antitussives), antihistamines, narcotics, and bronchodilators. The study, published in Primary Care Respiratory Journal, was conducted by researchers at Baqiyatallah University Hospital, Tehran, Iran from 2008 to 2011. 97 patients who had experienced PPC for more than three weeks were randomized in double-blinded fashion into three groups: 1. A jam like paste was prepared which consisted of 20.8 grams of honey plus 2.9 grams of instant coffee for the first group ('HC'). 2. 13.3 mg of prednisolone for the second group (steroid, 'S'). 3. 25 mg of guaifenesin for the third group (control, 'C'). The researchers described the patient treatment protocol as follows: "The participants were told to dissolve a specified amount of their product in warm water and to drink the solution every eight hours for one week. All the participants were evaluated before treatment and one week after completion of treatment to measure the severity of their cough. The main outcome measure was the mean cough frequency before and after one week's treatment calculated by a validated visual analogue cough questionnaire score." "Each year, billions of dollars are spent on controlling and trying to cure cough while the real effect of cough medicines is not quite reliable. Even though PPC is reported to account for only 11-25% of all cases of chronic cough8 and it is not associated with disability and mortality, it can cause morbidity and is responsible for medical costs.

Around 65% of US women between the ages of 15 and 49 are on some form of contraception. About 17.5% of those women use the birth control pill. Most were first prescribed it as teenagers, often for reasons that had nothing to do with preventing pregnancy. Things like acne, painful periods, and irregular cycles. On the surface, it seems to work. Women on the pill dramatically reduce the chance of pregnancy and often see improvements in non-pregnancy issues for which they get a prescription. But below the surface, a decade or more of the pill does things to a woman's body that the average doctor doesn't discuss. If you are a man reading this, you have a stake in this too. The women in your life, the relationships you're in, the children you may have someday… All of it is downstream of a decision most women made before they were old enough to vote. Later in the piece, I go into what the male side of this equation looks like. Now, hormonal birth control can be legitimate medicine for some women with legitimate medical conditions. And if you take it electively, it’s your choice. No shame. I simply want you to know the potential drawbacks so you’re more confident talking with your doctor about these things and making the best decision for you. Here is what the research shows: Depression. In 2016, a Danish research team led by Charlotte Skovlund published a nationwide cohort study in JAMA Psychiatry following 1,061,997 women aged 15 to 34 for over six years. Combined oral contraceptives users had a 23% higher rate of first-time antidepressant use than nonusers. Adolescent users on combined oral contraceptives had nearly double the rate. All hormonal contraception types (pill, patch, ring, IUD) showed elevated risk, with the highest signals among the youngest women. Suicide risk. The same team published a 2018 follow-up in the American Journal of Psychiatry using a separate cohort of 475,802 Danish women. Current or recent hormonal contraceptive users had roughly double the risk of a first suicide attempt and triple the risk of completed suicide compared to women who had never used it. The highest risk was in the first months after starting. The patch showed the strongest signal, followed by the IUD, the ring, and the pill.

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