An energetic speaker and writer, Arlene Pellicane has been featured on The Hour of Power, The 700 Club, and Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah. Her new book, 31 Days to a Younger You: No Surgery, No Diets, No Kidding, has just been published by Harvest House. In it Arlene offers practical solutions to look and feel younger, especially if you want to have more energy, be happier and healthier, and prevent illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

"All this and more is possible when you take an honest look in the mirror, both at your body and your soul, and allow God to touch your life," writes Arlene. Many women have already found value in Arlene's beauty and health tips, along with her biblical encouragement to "grow more beautiful from the inside out." 

continue reading

This week last year I had just returned from my family's home in the Pacific Northwest. My grandfather has passed away weeks earlier and this was the first holiday without him.  My relatives and I were adjusting to the new era, one ushered in by death's reminder that the kids are now adults and the adults on their way to grandparenthood.  This is not to be morbid or say they need walkers, but you could sense these thoughts on the faces around the living room as we pondered life without grandpa.

Two weeks later there was a murder a block from my house and I wrote an incredibly somber piece reflecting more than the emotions stirred by the effects of gun shots. I had spent 2009 recovering from a weakened immune system due to thyroid radiation treatment and it showed in my little brother whispering at Christmas asking if I was okay as I slept through most of the three days at his house.

continue reading

Up until recently, I have been on the bandwagon to make smokers pay for all of the polluted air, the lighting up of a cigarette in a restaurant or near my children, and the absurdity of driving by a hospital (the refuge of all things healthy) and witness a dozen doctors and nurses standing outside smoking. Smoking will harm you, cut your life short, and slowly destroy various parts of your body. The packs come with giant warning labels and the prices for packs are becoming outrageous (how many smokers need to quit nowadays, simply because they can no longer afford it?).

How many house fires and forest fires have been carelessly started by a smoldering cigarette? How many lives lost or cut short because of the lingering health problems associated with smoking? How many times have you seen an attractive woman (or man) walk down the street and you say to yourself 'wow, she's got it together....' Then she lights up a cigarette and the whole scene turns ugly....I am on the bandwagon that says smoking is bad. Smoking should be banned in hospitals, restaurants, and shops.

continue reading

There are many followers of Christ in this world who don't think much, if at all, about the connection between their food choices and their theology.  For many of these, there's a good chance they'll be eating a big slab of meat tonight, cooked over a fire, complemented by a pesticide laced salad, enhanced by an Italian Red, and washed down with coffee that was utterly affordable thanks to the rainforest that was cleared to increase the crop size.  None of these foods are seen as making a statement about their faith, but I'd argue that they do.  If I thought it was all going to burn up, especially in the near term (as I've been told it will, any day now, for the past 35 years), I'd join them in buying the most food for the least money.

Instead, I'll be having a slab of meat, a salad, red wine, and coffee, just like them, except utterly different. My meat will be grass fed, my salad organic and local, my wine from a local winery, and my coffee shade grown.  That is, at least, what I'll be eating when my food choices match my theology.  Believing that God's people are called to make God's good reign visible here and now in some small measure means that I need to make choices that exalt health, justice, and ecology (among other things) in all areas of my life, including "what's for dinner?"

continue reading

I have a confession.  I have been in a dysfunctional relationship for the past three and a half years.  It started one afternoon with my heart beating out of control and it has been a love/hate relationship ever since.  When things are in sync life seems bright and possibilities endless.  However, when there are long wrestling matches, I wind up jaded and broken, tired and hurt.  While tackling this relationship the past couple of years, I thought I could make it work. This relationship hasn’t made sense for a long time and it is one I must reconcile because I am not speaking of my marriage or my parents or my best friend, I’m speaking of my health.

2006 was definitely a stressful year: Graduating from grad school, the terrible job search, turning down a job I could see myself loving, but knowing it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I also started therapy to face my torturous inner voices. And on top of all of that, I came face to face with many family members awful perceptions of me as a former fundamentalist that was once upon a time more interested in the “right” way rather than the loving way.  It was a long year, and in August of that year, my thyroid, which unbeknownst to me had been pissed off for months prior, really let me know how mad it had become one day by speeding my heart rate up to 120 beats per minute (resting).

continue reading

Today it was reported that up to 90,000 people could die from the swine flu this Fall.  I’m sorry, I mean the H1N1 flu virus.  It is namely worrisome for children and young adults and the University of Kansas has already reported 47 cases.  (Mind you, the flu leads to 40,000 deaths each year as it is. So I’m not sure what the fascination with this particular flu is about.)  So here we have a perfect storm: the president is pushing healthcare reform, people are getting and are going to get sick, we are one of the unhealthiest nations on the planet, etc. Buckle your seat belts – the media is going to take us on a wild ride.  

It’s fascinating that this is only day when a story about Michael Jackson has been reported and it is not number one on CNN’s most popular list.  The swine flu has overtaken Michael Jackson.  Pretty soon we’ll all be wearing our masks and disinfecting everything in sight.  Just give it a month.

Modern medicine and I have been about as amicable as oil and water. We share each other's company when we have to, but otherwise don't mix well. But healing and intervention have decorated my conversations lately in such a way that I've been forced to (re)think this mix.

Scenario #1: I was speaking with a young girl who leaves tomorrow to spend the remainder of her year in Mozambique, Africa. Sharing her greatest fear, she expressed that of contracting Malaria. When I told her I'd had it myself, and clearly survived, tears of relief streamed down her face. I explained though, that as soon as my symptoms took hold, I'd gotten myself to a nearby clinic. A neighbor diagnosed that same summer, however, chose a different route of believing God as the perfect Healer and refusing the clinic. She died within 48-hours.

continue reading

We're in the midst of trying overhaul the health care system of our country, and debates are flying across cyberspace about taxation, socialized medicine, and the dangers of rationed health care. Did you know the roughly 60% of home foreclosures have their roots in a family health crisis? One major surgery can wipe out a lifetime of savings which, in a country where the primary means of independence in one's senior years comes from taking of yourself by saving for the future, is no small matter. These are just some of the reasons that the subject is important. Entrenched special interests are the reason this isn't easy.

continue reading

It starts and ends with our bodies.  What’s “it”? Everything. Life. We will never know anything outside of our bodies yet we have been taught to fight against them, to numb pain, and look for the fountain of youth.  It’s hard to think of another thing we have tried to push so far outside of our bodies than sexuality.  In reading up on this topic and exploring cultural dialogue, it is almost impossible to consider sexuality without sex, but what I’m advocating for is that yes, sex is part of if, but not the whole and not a starting place either.  So often it is sex that makes us consider sexuality, but what if it was reversed?  What if we thought about sexuality outside of sex?

Rewind to junior high.  Boys' voices start cracking, girls breasts start developing, and hair grows in places one only sees in text books or the dictionary.  It has become a stage of life in Western culture labeled as “awkward,” “ugly,” “annoying,” “difficult,” and my personal fave, “survival of the fittest.” It is an incredibly random person that I meet that enthusiastically says, “I loved junior high!” In this developmental phase many kids’ parents are caught off guard: “It happened so fast.”  “She’s still my little girl.”  When I got my period, my dad and I had a totally awkward conversation and he told me 15 years later he, being the father of 3 boys and 1 girl (me), decided that my mom would just “take care of it.” And so it begins, this weird separation that can lead to suppression, exploration, or exploitation.

continue reading