Choose Life: Optimizing Your Health and Functioning Toward 100 Years and Beyond

By Denice D. Cook M.D.

In this rapidly changing, highly technical world isnt it comforting to know that there are a few things that you are still in control of? In this book Choose Life you will explore some of the aspects of nutrition including dietary supplements, alkaline water, the importance of detoxification, and aspects of spirituality all designed to aid you in improving your overall health.

Choose Life is written to encourage you, the reader, to take some control over your health and to make wise choices regarding the food and water that you consume. You will also be compelled to seek for more knowledge to improve your health since much more information will be unveiled in the years to come, through revelatory insight and research. Denice D. Cook M.D.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449079741

Denice D. Cook M.D.

Dr. Denice Cook has practiced medicine over the past 17 years. She is a board certified pediatrician who currently practices medicine in Illinois. Dr. Cook became interested in the impact of nutrition on overall health as she began to notice that certain diseases, diagnosed in her patients, family, friends, and fellow church members was exacerbated by poor nutrition. This in large part was due to the choices made regarding the food and beverages consumed. In her quest to obtain more knowledge in this area, Dr. Denice Cook noticed an improvement in her own health and thereby felt compelled to share this information with others. Her insight into the spirituality aspect of the choices we make, as we quest for obtaining optimal health, will encourage the reader to combine both their spiritual walk and physical choices to be as healthy as possible.

Book preview

Contents

PREAMBLE

INTRODUCTION

Dedication:

Acknowledgements

Definitions:

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER

1. Seven Things in the Garden of Eden

2. The Importance of Water

3. Detoxification and Food Additives

4. Supplements

5. Tips for Enhancing Food Nutrition

6. The Benefits of Exercise

7. Simple Changes to Enhance Health

8. The Aging Process

9. Spiritual Gifts and Optimal Health

10. The Benefits Of Fasting

REFERENCES:

RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

PREAMBLE

Are you tired of being sick and tired? Are you ready to partner with the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, your Creator, to change the detrimental thinking habits about how you eat, drink, and exercise?

Are you ready to feel physically better, become more energized and to move forward so that you can fulfill the destiny for which you were ordained on this earth, in this time and in this hour?

If your answer is yes, then walk with me through the following pages and let’s take in the knowledge that will help us absorb and exude the life God meant for us to enjoy. The Bible says:

Study to show thyself approved unto God… II Timothy 2:15.

Let’s make it our business to obtain the knowledge which the Heavenly Father has granted to us:

"Has thou not known? Has thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He gives power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint," Isaiah 40:28-31

INTRODUCTION

As I began this book, the Lord God in His awesome orchestration of events, arranged for me to meet and talk with unique individuals who either gave me information to research regarding this topic of health, or asked questions which caused me to search for the answers.

The Holy Spirit also began to unveil some of God’s revelations in His Holy Scriptures, the Bible, to enhance our health. The Holy Spirit shared with me that there are a few who have found a way to walk so close to God that they essentially walk in divine health. However, many have not yet arrived at this level of relationship between themselves and God.

This book is written to give basic information to those who would like to enhance their health by eating foods that promote healing, drinking water that is as free of harm to the body as possible, exercising, and who are not resistant to taking supplements in order to add further nutrition to their diet.

In obtaining information to write this book, it was always interesting to see how God orchestrated events as He does when He desires for us to partner with him to accomplish a task.

A young lady at my church asked me if I knew of the benefits of alkaline water because she felt that this water could be quite beneficial to my patients. Her question caused me to search for the answer regarding alkaline water. I discovered that this type of water is very beneficial to the body. I also came across literature by Dr. Theodore A. Baroody, the author of the book Alkalize or Die. Included in his book is a chart outlining the pH of various foods and his philosophy is that we should eat a diet consisting of 80% alkaline foods and 20% acidic foods for more optimal health enhancement. His recommendation is that we should eat 8 out of 10 foods per day which are considered alkaline forming.⁹⁸

I became familiar with nutra-ceuticals when a Christian friend urged me to talk with a prophetess, who lives in the state of Washington. The prophetess introduced me to dietary supplements that are made from glycoproteins.

The Lord further encouraged me to meet with an Apostle and his wife, on a very rainy Saturday afternoon, during 2006, to learn about these glycoproteins and this led to my using the dietary supplements myself. I have found these glycoproteins to be so very beneficial and I still use them today. I initially used these glycoprotein supplements when I traveled to another country and was attempting to boost my immune system. I was hoping not to develop any illnesses while traveling abroad. By the grace of God, I did not contract any illnesses while traveling. Later I saw the benefits of these glyconutrients when they were used by some of my patients.

Meanwhile, I was encouraged by a church friend, to purchase a particular health product from an individual. This individual shared their belief that cholesterol plaque is deposited in the internal surfaces of the arteries because of the acidity in the body. Further, that cholesterol plaque is the body’s way of defending, or buffering the walls of the blood vessels from acid.

The belief is that if the body is slightly alkaline, then the cholesterol plaques dissolve because there is no need for the added protection on the internal walls of the blood vessels in a slightly alkaline environment. This hypothesis seemed quite logically sound. However, I knew that I needed to search for scientific information to determine whether or not this was scientifically sound.

In reading Rita Elkins book, I discovered that in 2001, Italian researchers reported that the reason cholesterol deposits stick to the wall of arteries may be due to an undetected infection that inflames blood vessels.¹⁹ However, the question arose in my mind: what if the inflammation in the blood vessel wall is due to repeated acidic exposure and not an undetected infection? I considered this information food for thought.

Later in reading Dr. Robert O. Young’s book entitled The pH Miracle for Weight Loss, I learned that one of the signals for the liver to make cholesterol is increased acidity in the body.⁵⁶

Specifically, the liver (which is responsible for 80% of our cholesterol; what we get from our diets accounts for only 20%) makes LDL cholesterol, famous as bad cholesterol because it makes up the plaque inside your arteries that can eventually impede blood flow. The plaque is actually protective, however, saving your arteries from the ravages of acids. Without it, without the cholesterol, the acids could burn holes right through the arteries throughout your circulatory system, and you could bleed to death.⁵⁶

In having a discussion with Dr. Mildred Bright, she asked if there were a way in which we can live so that it is not necessary to detoxify our bodies. To answer this question, I knew that I needed to address detoxification and why it is extremely important in our fast paced, modern, industrialized lifestyles. I found that it is imperative that we detoxify our systems periodically due to the excessive pollutants in our water, the air we breathe, and the chemicals in the foods that we eat. Even the toothpastes, creams, lotions, and soaps, that most of us use on our bodies routinely, contain a variety of chemicals that may be detrimental to our health. There are also chemicals in the cosmetics that many women wear on their skin on a daily basis, as well as in fingernail polish. Thank God, there are a few companies that are now attempting to make cosmetics, toothpastes, creams, fingernail polish, and deodorants with much less toxic chemicals.

Dr. Theodore Baroody’s book states that blessing our food and giving thanks to God for the food makes the food more alkaline.⁹⁹ He writes:

The energy produced by prayer alkalizes all that it touches, even the food that we eat. If prayer is hurriedly recited by rote, with little feeling, then little energy is imparted. In order for food to be electrically and chemically altered into alkalinity, the prayer must be honestly felt. Say a sincere prayer to the Heavenly Father before eating, and then taste the sweet difference.⁹⁹

Kirilian photographs which reveal subtle electromagnetic energy fields were taken of water before and after it was blessed by a priest. The results were astonishing. Kirilian photographs were also taken of hands before a prayerful healing session. The hands showed only a minor light. Afterwards, the hands were ablaze with light. This is prayer in action. Alignment with the Holy Spirit is the most powerful and rapid way of achieving an alkaline-forming reaction in the body. ⁹⁹

Although, I did not find a specific Scripture in the Bible which spoke directly to food becoming more alkaline, after blessing the food, I did find, in the Biblical passage of Exodus 23:25 that if we serve the Lord our God, then He will bless our bread (food) and our water and will take sickness from the midst of us. In other words, if we align ourselves to serve and obey our Heavenly Father, then He will bless our food and water and remove sickness/disease from our bodies. The Kirilian photographs that Dr. Theodore Baroody spoke of in his book are examples of scientific evidence which confirms the spiritual process that the Bible spoke of thousands of years ago.

During 2007, I received a prophetic word from a fellow church member. The prophet said Books, books, books are within you. Once a prophetic word is spoken, provided certain conditions are met, the word will come to pass; either immediately or