The ultimate test of excellence in physiology and health is not breaking a world record at the Olympics, singing the highest note at the opera, or knocking someone unconscious in the boxing ring. The ultimate test of focused fitness is living a long and abundant life of happiness and wholeness in service for God and for others.
In order to live such a life, we need to grasp the wisdom that the Creator put into the whole body. All organs of the body are arranged into systems for service. These systems are all united into oneness, just as Paul observed: “A man’s body is all one, though it has a number of different organs.” (1Cor. 12:12, Knox) These global relationships are fascinating.

How Is the Body Joined Together in Unity?
Structurally: the vital organ of the skin and millions of fibers throughout the body fasten and hold us together. By fluids: because enriched water flows through the entire body, what happens to one part of the body can spread widely. Chemically: we are united by chemical messenger molecules called hormones that bathe the 120 trillion cells of the body. This enables the cells of the body to send and receive chemical signals to and from every portion of the body.

These hormones are of three kinds:
Endocrine hormones, which can send messages from one place, such as the pituitary gland, via the blood to the entire body-as occurs in major stress.
Paracrine hormones, which send chemical signals to adjacent cells, and prompt shorter durations of action than those of the endocrine hormones.
Autocrine hormones, which are important chemical signals that act on the cells which secrete them.
The body’s chemical communication system to distant tissues and cells is slow, but ideal and economical for “mass communication.”

And lastly, the body is held together neutrally: nerves and the brain provide the fastest communication network, at an expensive metabolic price tag. This high speed, exclusive system contains more “private lines,” and the bulk of the body’s control centers.

Illustrations
At dinner time the digestive system is front and center. The other systems of the body should support and enjoy the process. This obviously not the time nor place for stress. The output of blood from the heart may go up even 40 percent after a large meal.
Later, while one is working in the shop or garden, the muscular system should be emphasized. The heart, lungs, and nervous system should rally around and support the muscular activity.
When the work of the day is done and you find yourself relaxing and reading this article, the nervous system should not only be in charge, but it should be sustained by other systems in two ways – appropriate upturn of supporting systems and downturn of systems and functions that could interfere with the focused activity at hand.

How Can This Oneness Be Damaged?
Major stress during dinner is one way. Emergency pressures or even very heavy responsibility can send, through the hormones, signals to millions of cells and to the stomach and digestive organs indicating, "We are in trouble! Man your stations for battle!" Meanwhile the eyes, ears, taste buds, and millions of food receptors are saying, "Relax we are having dinner." Results? Confusion, disorder, and, all too often, gastric distress and other health troubles. The body is built for "This one thing I do." Twelve big "bites to eat" while standing, as the phones, taxies, traffic, and big-city noise are clamoring for our attention, tends to change global coordinated physiology into fractured pathology. When hormonal drives are pushing the body in one direction and the brain is electronically pushing the body in the opposite direction, the result is chaos now, and medical bills later!

The Liver and the Brain
When the liver is worn out and ruined as by alcohol or virus, it cannot detoxify the blood properly. Result? The brain can't well handle the toxic poison, ammonia. The brain may then sink into coma-even death. But consider a milder more common case-second- or third-hand protein food, which put a burden on the liver. Then, if stress is superimposed, the emergency, short-cut capillaries can open up and the regular capillaries shut down, in order to rush the blood to the muscles for "fight or flight." Result? The blood is not as clean as usual. The brain can't be cool and patient. No, it is primed for struggle, not poise and deliberation. Obviously, diet is vastly more important and complicated than just cholesterol, fat, and vitamins.

The Kidneys and the Brain
The kidneys are vital organs whose job is also to cleanse the blood, and balance it for volume, acidity, and chemical composition. By drinking plenty of pure water between meals, and not wearing out the kidneys by overeating, eating too much protein (in particular animal protein), or ignoring uncontrolled diabetes, or other kidney diseases, the kidneys will last and thrive. But effect follows cause. When these living filters and blood balancers are going ... going ... gone!, health becomes impossible. Potassium, for example, can build up to such a high level that the heart will fill up with blood and stop emptying. Of course, dialysis can delay the awful day. But what a price to pay for living by impulse instead of habitually practicing prevention!

Exercise Helps
When we exercise daily, great things happen. We multiply energy factories, called mitochondria, in our muscles. Even those in our heart muscles can be improved. If this exercise is productive and challenging work, our brains can also be strengthened. Our circulation improves. Our high-density lipoprotein (HDL) goes up. HDL particles serve as little "pick up trucks" in the blood. They go around picking up cholesterol from our arteries and storage tissues, and then dumping it into the liver, where it is marvelously transformed into bile salts that help with fat digestion. Looks like a loving design, doesn't it? Exercise also helps our sleep. Because tonight's sleep builds tomorrow's energy, it is no wonder that people who exercise feel better and have less depression. All the systems of the body are improved by moderate regular exercise. It is just like Paul wrote: If "one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." (1 Cor. 12:26b)

Overeating
Overeating, even of healthful food, does to our bodies what too much gasoline does to your carburetor. It floods it. The engine becomes hard to start, weak, fitful, and makes too much smoke or other by-products. Similarly, overeating produces free radicals and myriads of undesirable by-product molecules. Many do not realize that excess food can be converted into saturated fat and even cholesterol itself. These by-products are hard on the blood. The brain can sink into drowsiness, dullness, or worse. When the stomach is stuffed and stretched, and the blood is overburdened with an excess load, it is hard to be patient, kind, and wise.

Balanced Circulation
As you have no doubt heard, "perfect health depends upon perfect circulation." Profound idea. But blood tends to go where the heat is. If we wear one layer, or half of a layer, over our legs and two, three, or more layers over our hearts, how can we build for a balanced circulation? So, clothe the limbs for balanced circulation and you will enjoy better overall health.

What About the Future?
How can we take care of rogue states, brief-case-hidden dirty nuclear bombs, radio- controlled smart-bombs, germ-warfare, poisoned water supplies, etc.?? The answer: We, all of our governments individually or collectively, can't!

What Is the Real Answer?
God not only can, He also promises to hold back the four winds of strife until His work for this dying planet is done. So our practical ultimate answer to massive accelerating stress is TRUST-in Him. The night before Peter was to be executed, he slept soundly. "Then the Angel woke him up and delivered him." (Acts 12:3-10)
"What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee." (Psalm 56:3)

In Summary-How to Practice Global Physiology
1. Practice balance in all aspects of life.
2. Exercise moderately every day.
3. Eat temperately, and drink water adequately.
4. Balance your clothing-make sure that the parts of your body farthest from your heart are suitability warm.
5. Trust faithfully in your Maker and Redeemer. ■

Dr. Baldwin is T.V. lecturer for Health Healines, 3ABN T.V., Applied Physiologist at Wildwood Lifestyle Center & Hospital, and Science Editor of the J. of Health & Healing.