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Today’s Blog Post
Bald Mice and the Stress in Ministry
It is Saturday Morning and it is close to the end of our winter. It is one of the really non exciting days with some great activities out in the community to do.
WOW – there is a Book Sale at a Senior Citizen’s Retirement Home. That runs from 10 AM to 3 PM. Whoa! Now there is a possibility.
There is always the farmer’s market where I can walk around see what isn’t selling and wish that I could sit beside the vendors and not sell something too.
But then there is the Larger Mall where I can sit and watch others while they watch me.
You can see from my rather low level life, there is not a whole lot of stress. Not much happens in my world these days – and I love it!
In the old days, the stress days… I would still be getting another sermon ready at this late hour. The phone and emails would be coming to me by the hour letting me know that so and so had decided to got to their daughter’s place and wouldn’t be in church.
Another email would arrive informing me that Dear Brother and Sister M would be attending a different church starting this Sunday. They were hurt by the comments made in the Foyer last week and they were not going to take it anymore. Then to top it off someone at Swiss Chalet had said something that made her cry all the way home. They had commented on her eating such a BIG PIECE of PIE!
Then the phone would ring telling me that Brother M was very low in the hospital. The family was very upset and needed me right away. As I would drive to the hospital I would be rehearsing my sermon notes for the next morning. Sermon Title was “Pure Joy”
Holy Carp! I was stressed out. Note I didn’t use the word Crap along with Holy. Someone might still give it to me if I did that!
Now I am very much relaxed with the new mode of living. I have moved into a time that I now have a very unusual thing happening.
I can hear my hair grow! I am not kidding you. Without the stress and the constant list of demands, the toe curling screech of endless problems – my hair not only grows faster I can hear it.
And this morning early as I was reading the News from around the world… I discovered why!
Tara Parker Hope wrote about “Mice baldness reversed” Lab animals treated for stress regrow fur. The article appeared in the New York Times and was in the Chronicle Herald for me to read.
I quote Tara about what happened…
“Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Veterans Administration were working with genetically altered mice that typically develop head-to-tail baldness as a result of overproducing a stress hormone.
The experiment wasn’t focused on hair loss. Instead, it was designed to study a chemical compound that blocks the effects of stress on the gut. The researchers treated the bald mice for five days with the compound and then returned them to the cages, where they scampered about with several furry mice from a control group.
Three months later, the scientists went back to the cage to conduct additional experiments. They were surprised by what they saw inside — all of the mice had full heads and backs of hair. The once-bald mice, eventually identified through ear tags, were indistinguishable from their normal, furry cage mates.” End quote
Are you seeing the importance of this study?
Every minister that I know needs to read this. Most that I know are going Bald… or are already Bald… and have been for years.
Now the dear Doctor went on to say… quote…
“Dr. Million Mulugeta, co-director of the preclinical stress biology program at UCLA, said he looked inside the cage and at first wondered why the bald mice weren’t there. "I asked my colleague, ‘How come these mice aren’t distinguishable from the others?’ " he said. "We went back to our data log, and we realized all the mice had grown hair. It was a totally unexpected finding."
End quote.
Now I am not saying that my colleagues that are under so much stress need to take the Mouse Anti Stress Compound. That will not help.
The scientists have kind of wondered now if that compound is doing the job.
I can adamantly state that it is not. It is the simple fact that they placed the mice in their cage for three months and didn’t bother them. They were also in a cage with other mice that were not stressed… and were growing hair normally.
So the answer for all my stressed out friends is a good cage, isolated from the bezerk and away from the complicated… and YOUR HAIR WILL GROW! In fact you will start hearing it grow!
I need a hair cut – soon! In fact if I had it in me – I should get it cut today. But – why hurry. There are other things to do… and well.. the day is just right… slowed right down and nothing much to do.
It has taken me almost three years now to appreciate the fact that doing nothing is perfectly okay. Reading one or two books a week is cool. Going for a drive to get some Poutine is a great date with my wife… is real good.
It can’t get any better. No stress!
Mice and me can identify very well now!
~ Murray Lincoln ~
http://www.murraylincoln.com/
Resource
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Science/1230331.html
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