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And uh then she'd go and binge some more and you feel even more pain on the other side. And then you go through symptoms of withdrawal from from addiction. And she asked this question, what is your drug? The thing that you start that you have trouble stopping or makes you feel good in the moment but worse afterwards. And the thing that she recommends is something called dopamine fasting. And she talks about how this one young young person came into her that was smoking marijuana 10 times a day. And she was doing it just to feel normal. She wasn't doing it for the high. Because what she indicates is that if you keep on pushing on one side too much, the set point becomes it it moves.
So it takes more and more with diminishing returns. um in the brain. What happens is when you get a flood of dopamine over and over again, the body responds by culling the dopamine receptors and you get less and less pleasure. What would normally be uh pleasure is a sunset or a sunrise. But when your dopamine receptors are called so much, it doesn't do anything for you. It takes more and more stimulation. So this young lady was told, "Hey, 30 days Dopamine fast. No marijuana, no substances, no media. Young lady thought she was crazy. She decided to do it. 30 days later, she came in. Skin was glowing. And the beauty of the way our brains work, neuroplasticity, those dopamine receptors, they grow back. They grow back.
uh but and so she says look I feel better less anxiety there's balance and and the thing that struck me in her book is she says the converse of this works tr works too is if if you want to experience pleasure push on the pain side now she says don't go and hurt yourself okay but she says there's three forms of healthy pain and I want to cover them very quickly with you or the She said very, you know, don't go out and become a massochist. But she says that there's three healthy forms of pain. Exercise. You ever have runner's high? You run and afterwards you feel so good for hours afterwards because that's that's because you've experienced pain and the body's go Yeah. It's the pain.
You've experienced the pain and then the body's responding with with pleasure. It's going for that homeostasis. And uh the the other thing that she brings out, you can see that person has no ising fasting. Now fasting has become kind of in vogue. Okay, here's Luca Donuch. Uh during the summer he does intermittent fasting every day except Sundays. The Laker, he fasts. He fasts. Now this is uh from Novak Djokovic. He won the grand slam 24 times. Um he revealed that he believes in the power of intermittent fasting. The world number one regularly practiced fasting for at least 16 hours without food which he claims helps in the healing of his body. He talks about how he was dropping out of tournaments all the time and a nutritionist came to him and said, "Look, you need to you need to work on this thing and one of the things he does is intermittent fasting." Now, when I was in Alaska, I was having a difficult
time in one of my churches and uh without knowing the research, I read a statement talking about fasting. So, I fast for 24 hours once a week. And in the beginning, all I could think about was rice. I was like, you know, I just wanted brown rice. That's it. I was so hungry. And and the thing about it is when I would break my fast and eat on Tuesday morning, sometimes I would just eat plain bread with nothing on it. And it's like like the irony is you enjoy food more after fasting. And it struck me that the key to recovery is not self-indulgence. Ironically, it's self-denial. And that's what Anna LMK is bringing out. There's all this research on fasting, the NIH, the benefits of intermittent fasting, you have autophagy. I don't have time to go into all these benefits and so forth, but you know, you you have all of the latest research, reduce biomarkers of disease, preserve learning and memory.
And she says that the benefits of fasting to neurons. If you don't, this is from Matt Matson at the National Institute of Health. If you don't eat for 10 to 16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the body. Now, here is something about LeBron James, and this is um you know, I didn't know this, but the average career in the NBA lasts 4.5 years. And this is I made this slide a year ago. Um he's over 40 and he's still playing. And one of the things that he does, he spends a lot of money on his body. You can see that he's doing the cold plunge.
And this is another thing that Anna LMI brings out is is helpful, a healthy source of pain. I shared this slide the other night and this is what happens with cocaine or the candy bar effect. It goes up but then it comes down. But if you keep on doing this, your your up is less and your down is lower and then your baseline gets reset after a while. But if you get into cold water, if you've ever done the cold plunge, it's the reverse. You get in and it feels terrible, but then afterwards you have the pushing on the other side and then it comes it comes back up. And this is from Dr. Huberman out of Stanford University. There's a beautiful study published in the European Journal of Physiology showing that getting into water, whether it's a cold shower or ice bath or any type of plunge, including the ocean, for anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes, creates a 2.5x increase in
dopamine that lasts for many hours. It's a unique stimulus because it's not just a spike that quickly drops. Instead, it's a long arc that increases your baseline dopamine, enhancing alertness, feelings of well-being, and overall mood. So, one of the things that we do at the depression anxiety program u is is cold cold plunges. There was one guy who was coming off heroin a number of years ago and we usually asked them to detox before, but he had just quit on site. He's going through all these withdrawals and he said um he was not getting into that cold water. He was a Texan. He says we don't do cold water. But finally they convinced him to go in and he said when he went in it was like this switch went off and he's been clean to this day. He does his own depression anxiety programs in Texas completely recovered and this was a part of his journey. And Dr. Dr.
Anna LMKI talks about how there was this one person coming off cocaine and how the cold plunge was able to help him and it's actually the pain of the cold water and uh I do this at home. Uh I'm always sensitive on the time because I know you need to pick up your kids but uh anyways this is uh this is something you can do. I have this video that I sometimes show of me doing it. But anyways, all right. So, so here's all the benefits that you get from according to Don Dr. M Hannah LMK out of Stanford uh from from healthy pain, cold exposure, exercise, fasting, um all all of the benefits. She says it's better than any pill. And she brings this out that if you seek pleasure, okay, porn, all these types of things, I it produces a shortterm high, but in the end there is depression, anxiety, it's the Solomon effect. That's the pleasure dynamic. But if you seek
healthy pain, exercise, biblical meditation, the ice bath, it's it's the path of abundance. That's the irony. And one of the struggles I always had in pastoral ministry was how do I recover? And I'll tell you what my recovery typically looked like. Saturday night, ice cream, pizza, be by myself, and ESPN. And I'm not saying those are the, you know, but that was that was trying to fill a void to recover. But then I feel even worse on Sunday morning. The irony is I found that in my recovery, you know what I do now? I fast. I fast. Now it feels terrible and then I get into a tub of cold water and then it pushes on the other side and that is a part of my recovery. It It's been amazing. It's been amazing. Now, now here is LeBron James and he admits that in 2011 that this was the toughest uh loss of his career.
And uh the next year he went on his Twitter account and he put zero dark 3023 activated. He went on a media fast the entire playoffs. He would do this every year. I heard recently he stopped, but for several years he would go on a media fast. And look at what he said. There's too much nonsense out there. This is when I lock in right now and I don't need nothing creeping into my mind that don't need to be there. Yeah, that's what he said. Stay off the TV. Stay off social media. You win a game, everyone is the greatest player in the world. you lose a game, they're throwing dirt on you. And this is from the Bleacher Report. James says that he has changed his sleep patterns this season, and it's been a boon to his success. Once the playoffs roll through, he's not just well-rested, he's laser focused.
Now, why am I sharing you all this? Because there's a interesting Bible passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 9:4. All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away. But we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I'm not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should, otherwise I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified. Look at the analogy he says. He's basically saying if LeBron James is disciplining his body to put a ball into a hoop, how much more should the Christian be a spiritual athlete for the Lord's glory?
That's what he's saying. Now, if my wife comes to me, if I go home after a long day and I go to my wife and um I notice this bunch of dishes in the sink and she says, "Honey, will you do the dishes?" I say, "Honey, is this a divorce issue?" She's like, "Of course not." I said, "Well, then I don't want to do it." walk away. Next day I come home, notice laundry hasn't been folded. She's like, "It's been so hard. Kids are driving me up the wall." I say, "Honey, this is divorce issue." Said, "No." "Well, then I don't want to do it." Everything she asks, "Divorce? I don't want to do it."
How long is that marriage going to last? You know, sometimes we treat God worse than that. We say, "Lord, is this a salvational issue? If it's not a salvational issue, I don't want to do it." God has feelings, too. How many of you want to be in relationship with someone like that? Bare minimum. There's a fascinating uh quote. I'll end with this. It's uh I don't have it on the screen but in Romans 12 Paul says therefore Romans 12. Now one pastor said when you see the word therefore ask what it's there for. All right. Therefore is a concluding statement. Romans 1 through11 is the premise. And in Romans 12 he says therefore because of the mercies of God.
Romans 1 through11 is about the grace of God. The mercy of God. You can't earn it. You can't buy it. It's a free gift. Romans 12, he says, "Therefore, based on the mercies of God, has God been merciful to you?" Yeah. Is he giving chance after chance, opportunity after opportunity? I would have given up on me. He says, "Therefore, because of the mercies of God, give your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God." This is reasonable. It's not legalism. It's reasonable. This is not Romans 1. It's Romans 12. If you've been touched by the mercies of God, you're like, "Lord, I want to discipline my body like an athlete. Not because I have to, but because I want to. I want to be the best version of myself for you. I don't do cold plunges in order to be saved. Are you kidding me? I don't fast in order to be saved.
And I don't feel guilty if I miss. I do it for the edge because I know that there's souls at stake and I'll be as sharp as possible for the Lord Jesus because of his mercy. I want to say, Lord, I give you this. Let us pray. Father in heaven, thank you so much for your grace, for your love, for the mercies of God. Sometimes we get these things in the wrong order, but we thank you that it's not Romans well one, it's Romans 12. Help us to experience the mercy of God, the grace of God. We can't earn it. We can't buy it. But when we've been touched by your love, we respond like Paul by saying, "I want to be the best version of myself for you. I want to be sharp. I want to be in tune. on be skilled to reach souls for your kingdom.
Help us to that end to glorify you with our bodies. For we ask these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.