TRUST AND FAITH

 Young Lady with Trust and Faith -

A Fine Example!

                   

                                    by

                                Keith Hunt

     Come back with me to 1968. I was a young man of 26, a

leading member in the local ….. Church of God, in fact the

right hand man to our local minister.

     Over the preceding two years we had seen a large increase in

new members in our church. One family came in, they were husband

and wife and four children. A country type family, down to earth

and very nice to visit with. Their children were very well

behaved indeed, a real pleasure to know them. I visited with them

a number of times over a two year period. The oldest of the

children was a young lady about 14 or 15 (not sure exactly now,

but certainly not more than 15 when the event I'm relating took

place). She was very mature for her age. She was serious minded,

and enjoyed reading the Bible and talking and listening to

spiritual matters. She was also very physically mature, fully

developed as a young lady, looked 17 or 18 in appearance.

     I have forgotten her name now, but certainly have not

forgotten the wonderful example of trust and faith she gave to me

and all of us in the church at that time. This is her story, and

I hope it will INSPIRE all of you, she certainly inspired me and

still does as I meditate on her life.

     Her family lived in town in a somewhat "old" house they

rented. It was as I recall the summer of 1968. The children

developed a sickness. It was found that the "house" - the walls

etc. were sick, one of those situation you hardly ever hear of

much anymore. A house becoming sick with .... whatever it was. I

remember the medical people saying they would have to leave the

house and have it de-fumigated, have the walls sprayed and

whatever they do to get the house livable again for human people.

     The young lady was the sickest of the four children. It got

so bad that our local minister advised the parents to admit her

to the hospital right away. She was taken to the hospital where

she was to stay and be under the care of the doctors. 

     The hospital called our minister and told him that what she

had was VERY SERIOUS indeed, and they had nothing in 1968 to

combat this sickness.

     Our minister called me the second day she was admitted to

the hospital, and said, "Keith, the young lady is in serious

condition with the decease she has. I would like you to go this

evening and visit with her. Please tell her how serious it is,

and explain it is a matter of life and death."

     That evening I went to visit the young lady. I walked into her

room as the nurse was walking out; the look on the nurse's face 

was anything but reassuring. On the outside our young lady

she did not look to be sick. She was a very pretty young lady,

and looked very calm and as pretty as ever. I had to tell her

that the doctors had told us that her condition was very serious,

that it was life or death. I explained to her that God CAN and

DOES at times, according to His will, HEAL us from sickness. 

But I also told her that for whatever reasons God does not always

heal us in this physical life. I explained that we do not always

know what God is going to do or not do. I told her that this was

a matter of life and death. I asked her if she understood what I

was saying (I was saying in a kind way that it could be possible

she may die from this sickness she had). 

     This young lady was calm and composed, very serene, and very

at peace, with herself and with God and with her situation. She

replied to me that she fully understood what I was saying.

     Now, this young lady could have started to get VERY ANGRY

with God. She could have said, "I'm so young! Why has God done

this to me? Why has He allowed me to get this sickness that could

kill me? I have all my life ahead of me. I want to marry, have

children, serve the Lord and just have some adult life. I'm angry

at God!"

     She could have been in that frame of mind. I'm telling this

lovely (physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) young

lady she may DIE! And she is so calm and peaceful in mind and

body.

     It was something I shall always remember. Something that

inspires me, to keep on keeping on in serving the Lord and

keeping a right attitude towards Him, not matter what I may face

in life.

     

     A young lady, a beautiful young lady in all aspects. She was

some terrific example. She was ready to accept whatever God was

going to allow to happen.

     A day later I received a phone call ..... our young lady had

died!

     I still get tears in my eyes thinking about this fine

example of trust and faith this young lady exhibited. It kind of

puts a lot of things in life and what has happened over the years

in the Church of God, into true perspective. Here was a young

lady, loving God and His word, who was ready to put her life

completely in His hands, and was ready to accept His will.

     What a great example! I will not be surprised at all to meet

her again in the first resurrection, at the coming of Christ Jesus.

She was a true young saint. I hope her relatively short life on earth 

in the flesh, is inspiring to you also. For we are told in Ecclesiastes

9: 11 that time and chance can come to anyone. Most of us do not

know what the next day may bring.

                            ..................

Written October 2007 

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THE BOOK "HEAVEN AND HELL" [2020] ---- BY BART D. EHRMAN

 NEW  BOOK——  BY  BART D. EHRMAN

HEAVEN  AND  HELL - A History

of the Afterlife [published 2020] 

A New York Times bestselling

historian of early Christianity takes

on two of the most gripping questions

of human existence: Where did

the ideas of heaven and hell come

from? Why do they endure?

INSIDE COVER:

What happens when we die? Most Americans believe a literal heaven and hell to be the age-old teachings of the Bible. But eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament, and they are not what Jesus and his earliest disciples taught.

So where did these ideas come from?

In clear and compelling prose, religion scholar Bart D. Ehrman recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from the epic of Gilgamesh to the writings of Saint Augustine and focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. He investigates ancient guided tours of heaven and hell, in which living persons observe the sublime blessings of heaven for those who are saved and the horrifying torments of hell for the damned. Some of these accounts describe near-death experiences, the oldest on record, with intriguing similarities to those reported today.

One of Ehrman's startling conclusions is that there never was a single Greek, Jewish, or Christian understanding of the afterlife, but rather numerous competing views. Moreover, these views did not come from nowhere: they were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. Only later, in the early Christian centuries, did they develop into the notions of eternal bliss or damnation widely accepted today……

INTO THE BOOK

....Here then are four visions [That Ehrman has related - Keith Hunt] of the afterlife, each unique but all tending toward the same end of guiding people's lives in the here and now by confronting them with what awaits them in the hereafter. Eternal glory or torment hangs in the balance. Christian readers at the time would not I have taken these tales to be pure fictions but would have accepted that they were rooted in the realities of the world to come.

None of these visions can be found in the Bible, because they do not, in fact, represent the earliest Christian views of the afterlife. The ideas of a glorious hereafter for some souls and torment for others, to come at the point of death, cannot be found either in the Old Testament or in the teachings of the historical Jesus. To put it succinctly: the founder of Christianity did not believe that the soul of a person who died would go to heaven or hell.

[Ehrman  is  right  on—— the  immortality  of  the  soul  cannot  be  found  in  the  Bible;  and  Jesus  indeed  did  not  teach  it - Keith Hunt]

But this became the standard Christian view over time, and it will be helpful to see where it ultimately came from, when it started to be adopted, and why it seemed so attractive. These are important questions, because belief in a literal heaven and hell continues to be held by most Christians in the world today—that is by millions, even billions of people. To see where this belief originated, we will need to begin our explorations many years before Christianity—before even the most ancient writings of the oldest parts of the Bible…..

Throughout history, for many people it has been the fear of torment: that when we die the justice of the Almighty will wreak vengeance on our poor souls—and possibly on new physical embodiments of our souls, created for the purpose—as we are punished for sins, disbelief, and ingratitude for the divine mercies available to us…….

Many others believe that at death our life is extinguished and we cease to exist in every way. The idea of nonexistence itself—of not waking up, of a personal identity permanently lost, world without end—inspires not relief but horror. How can we even imagine it? At all times of our lives, since we have been able to think, we have existed. How can we think of not existing?

[Well guess we could think of two hundred years ago; say a thousand; well say three thousand years ago—— we did not exist; we have no memory of it; it is a blank. I once had a minor operation. I was talking to the guy administering the stuff to put me out——boom, I was out, off like a light bulb. I had no dreams, just blackness and silence, until the nurse woke me up. Like going to sleep at night when you have no dreams; you just wake up. That experience I said to myself, was death to life again. I had no idea of time, no idea of how long I was under - Keith Hunt]

And so it is no surprise that death is often lamented in the great literature of the world, including the Bible. As the psalmist says, praising God for saving him for the time being from death, imaged as the realm of Sheol……..

Or, again:

I will give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my

whole heart.... For great is your steadfast love toward me; you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

(Psalm 86:12-13)

In no small part the Bible's authors praise God for saving them from untimely death because they realize all too clearly that life is short and death certain. And so the psalmist laments that people "like smoke ... vanish away" (Psalm 37:20); elsewhere we hear that "our days on earth are like a shadow" (1 Chronicles 29:15); or, as the New Testament book of James says, "[we] are a mist that appears for a while, and after which it disappears" (James 4:14) That is our life. Short and temporary like smoke, a shadow, or the morning mist……

The obsession with death and fear of what comes next extends beyond even the most ancient biblical records to the beginning of recorded history. It can be found in the ancient Mesopotamian epic known as Gilgamesh……..

Death After Death in the Hebrew Bible

It is often said, and widely believed, that views of the afterlife in ancient Israel were quite different from those found in the surrounding pagan world. After all, the Israelites had a fundamentally different religion, a monotheistic faith in the one Creator God who had called Israel to be his people. And there are indeed many distinctive features of Israelite understandings of the afterlife. But there are also numerous similarities with Greco-Roman views.

One thing they held in common was the deeply rooted sense of the inevitability and finality of death, a view that can be found in a number of passages of the Hebrew Bible. Thus, in the book of 2 Samuel, which records events that would have occurred in the early tenth century BCE, an anonymous woman is depicted as urging the great king David to forgive the heinous transgression of his son Absalom by reminding him that death is the end of the story: "We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up" (2 Samuel 14:14)…….

The Nature of Death

Even if death is inevitable for the ancient Israelites, what is it? For most of the Hebrew Bible, death is what happens when life leaves a person. And so we have the prayer of the psalmist, lamenting to God what is certain to come: "When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust" (Psalm 104:29). Here the person does not "go someplace"—other than back to the dust they came from. Humans were originally made from dust (Genesis 2:7) and that is where they return.

This is one key difference from the Greek thought represented best by Plato. Ancient Israelites did not subscribe to the view of the immortality of the soul. Souls are not inherently deathless, destined for an eternal existence. In ancient Hebrew thought, there was no "soul" in the Greek sense. This can be seen by the different terms used. The closest equivalent to the Greek psyche is the Hebrew nephesh. The nephesh, though, is not a soul, set in contrast to the body. Hebrew anthropology was not dualistic (body and soul) but unitary. Nephesh means something like "life force" or "life" or even "breath." It is not a substance that can leave a person and exist independently of the body. It is the thing that makes bodies live. When the body stops breathing, it becomes dead matter. In modern terms, when you stop breathing, your breath doesn’t go somewhere. It just stops. So too with the Hebrew nephesh. The person is then dead……..

Locations of Death in the Hebrew Bible

The Jewish scriptures contain a variety of views about what happens to a person at death. Most commonly, a person who dies is simply said to have gone to "death"—a term used some thousand times in the Bible. Better known but far less frequent, a persons ultimate destination is sometimes called "Sheol," a term whose meaning and etymology are debated. It occurs over sixty times in the Hebrew Bible, and there is unanimity among critical scholars that in no case does Sheol mean "hell" in the sense people mean today. There is no place of eternal punishment in any passage of the entire Old Testament. In fact—and this comes as a surprise to many people—nowhere in the entire Hebrew Bible is there any discussion at all of heaven and hell as places of rewards and punishments for those who have died.

Probably most people who read the Bible think of Sheol as a Jewish kind of Hades, a shadowy place where everyone goes and all are treated the same, a banal and uninteresting netherworld where nothing really happens and people are, in effect, bored for all eternity. But in fact, in most passages of the Bible where Sheol is mentioned, it may well simply be an alternative technical term for the place where an individual is buried—that is, their grave or a pit.

This can be seen throughout the poetic books of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Psalms, where most of the references to Sheol can be found…….

Dead Bodies That Return to Life: The Resurrection in Ancient Israel

After the period of the classical prophets, Jewish thinkers came to imagine that in fact there would be life for the individual who had died. For them, there was a possibility of life beyond the grave— real, full, and abundant life. But in this original Jewish conception, unlike widespread Christian views today, the afterlife was not a glorious eternity lived in the soul in heaven or a tormented existence in hell, attained immediately at the point of death. It was something else altogether. It was the idea that at the end of time God would vindicate himself and his people. When history and all its evil and suffering had run its course, God would reassert his sovereignty over this world and destroy everything and everyone who was opposed to him, bringing in the perfect, Utopian world he had originally planned. Inhabiting this world would be the righteous who had lived and suffered throughout all of history. God would miraculously bring them back into their bodies, and they would live, bodily, without any pain, misery, or suffering, for all time, in his most glorious kingdom…… 

In the later Jewish doctrine of the resurrection, God reverses death by bringing the breath of life back into the body, ensuring it will never die again. Unlike in the Greek tradition, here the person is made immortal….. [born with an immortal soul - Keith Hunt]

Immortality is an act of God, not an innate nature of the real essence of the human. Moreover, in these Jewish texts, the idea is not that people cannot die but precisely that they do die. God needs to raise them from the dead because they really are dead……

That is not to deny the unique importance of the doctrine of resurrection as it developed in Judaism in the years leading up to the life of Jesus. Indeed, it is fair to say that by the time of Christianity, most Jews held to some version of this doctrine, believing in a future restoration return to life but an entrance into life eternal, not lived as a disembodied soul but as a unified person, body and soul. 

That, as we will see, was also the view of Jesus and his followers, who, as a consequence, did not maintain that when a person died their soul separated from their body and went to heaven or hell. On the contrary, they were Jewish apocalypticists. They believed it was the body that would be raised on the Day of Judgment, when the righteous would be given eternal life and the wicked would be annihilated for all time……

Why did the final shift occur, from a belief in the bodily resurrection at the end of time to the view that rewards and punishments come immediately at the point of death? I would suggest two factors, one internal to Jewish thought and the other external.

It is easy to imagine that a simple shift in thinking played a significant role. For the doctrine of a future resurrection to work as an explanation for how God can be just, given all the pain and misery his people are suffering, it was not enough that he would later vindicate those who suffered for his sake—that he would later raise them from the dead and give them an eternal reward. Apocalypticists thought the suffering had gone on long enough—that it had gotten just as bad as it possibly could. And that led them to think that the future resurrection would happen soon. Very soon……

But what happens when it doesn't come? What happens when things just keep getting worse? And the wicked thrive more than ever? And the sufferings of the righteous only increase? Where is God? Why doesn't he act?

These questions led to a shift in thinking about the afterlife: justice occurs not in some vague, distant future but immediately after death. It comes right away. A person who dies faces judgment. Those who are wicked will face punishment for the crimes they have committed. Those who have lived lives of love, caring for others, doing what is right, trying to serve God, will be rewarded. Neither the punishment nor the reward will be short-term, for, say, the period of a lifetime. God is eternal, and so are his rewards and punishments. Eternal life or eternal torment is the choice set before all people. This shift in thinking obviously became key to the Christian formation of the doctrines of heaven and hell…….

BART  EHRMAN’S  BOOK  “HEAVEN  AND  HELL”  SHOULD  GIVE  HUNDREDS  OF  MILLIONS   OF  CHRISTIANS  FOOD  FOR  THOUGHT;  A  RE-LOOKING  AT  THE  TOPIC  OF  DEATH,  AND  WHAT  REALLY  TRANSPIRES  WHEN  WE  DIE.

THIS  SUBJECT  I  HAVE  COVERED  IN  DETAIL  ON  MY  WEBSITE —— keithhunt.com

FOR  REASONS  UNKNOW  MY  SERVER  IS  PRESENTLY  DOWN.  THEY  HAVE  LEFT  NO  WAY  TO  CONTACT  THEM,  I  HAVE  TO  TRUST  THEY  WILL  BE  BACK  UP  AT  SOME  POINT  IN  THE  FUTURE.

Keith Hunt    

MODERATION----- EVEN IN EXERCISE!

DURING  THIS  COVID-19  PANDEMIC  WE  DO  NEED  TO  KEEP  HEALTHY  SO  OUR  IMMUNE  ARMY  CAN  FIGHT  WELL,  IF  WE  GET  THIS  BAD  VIRUS  INSIDE  US.

BUT  MANY  MAY  BE  SHOCKED  TO  KNOW  THAT  TOO  MUCH  EXERCISE  CAN  BE  DETRIMENTAL  TO  YOUR  HEALTH.  IT'S  LIKE  THE  CASE  WITH  VITAMIN  A - YES  WE  NEED  IT,  BUT  TOO  MUCH  OF  A  GOOD  THING  CAUSES  HEALTH  PROBLEMS.

MY  DAD  HAD  A  CERTAIN  HEALTH  PROBLEM,  HE  HAD  HIS  BLOOD  TESTED  AND  THE  DOC  SAID  HE  HAD  TOO  MUCH  VITAMIN  A  IN  HIS  BODY;  MY  DAD  CUT  DOWN  ON  VITAMIN  A,  AND  PROBLEM--- GONE!

SO  ON  THE  SUBJECT  OF  EXERCISE  TAKE  NOTE  OF  THE  FOLLOWING  ARTICLE.

Keith Hunt

Why Too Much Exercise May Harm Your Heart, and What Science Tells Us About the Ideal Amount and Type of Exercise

February 12, 2016 | Dr. Mercola

• Dr. Mercolathe W to
  Friends And Family
  haring this Article.

Few people would ever consider pushing the limits of their endurance like Ben Lecomte, the first person to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Now he's planning to swim across the Pacific Ocean, from Tokyo to San Francisco — a wet and lonely 5,500-mile journey that will take about five or six months to complete.

As reported by NPR:

"Lecomte, who lives in Austin, Texas, is diving back into the ocean to focus attention on environmental problems .... During the swim, he will collect data on the Pacific, including the microbes and trash he encounters.

People can follow along on his Facebook page,2 'The Longest Swim.'"

This is the epitome of extreme exercise, and cardiologist Dr. Benjamin Levine, director of the Institute of Exercise and Environmental Medicine will study Lecomte's heart and health during this event.

To do that, he'll be using the same technology NASA uses to monitor the health of astronauts on the International Space Station.

Chances are Lecomte will damage his heart to some degree, because contrary to popular belief, more does not necessarily equate to better health when it comes to exercise. There's a "Goldilocks zone," beyond which the damage incurred outweighs the benefits.

Exercise Is Good Medicine at the Right Dosage

Modern fitness research offers many potent reminders that physical activity is one of the best "preventive drugs" for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.3

For example, one meta-review4 of 305 randomized controlled trials comparing the effectiveness of exercise versus drug interventions on mortality outcomes found "no statistically detectable differences" between exercise and medications for prediabetes and heart disease.

One of the key health benefits of exercise is that it helps normalize your glucose, insulin, and leptin levels by optimizing insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity. This is an important factor for optimizing your overall health and preventing chronic disease.

Another way in which exercise promotes good health and longevity is by forcing your mitochondria (those little "power stations" inside your cells that produce energy or ATP) to work harder, thereby producing more mitochondria (biogenesis) to keep up with the heightened energy requirement.

A side effect of this is a slowing down of your biological aging process.

However, as with other medications, there's the matter of dosage. Too little exercise and you won't get much benefit. (Worse yet, chronic inactivity has been shown to be an independent risk factor of chronic disease and early death.)

On the other hand, exercise too much, and you could do harm. As noted by Dr. Levine, while endurance athletes live longer than non-athletes — in general, nearly 20 percent longer than non-runners — the evidence also shows that going overboard does put your health at risk.

One of the risks of excessive high intensity cardio is you can develop enlargement of your heart that leads to something called diastolic dysfunction which can lead to heart failure and is really an epidemic in the U.S.

What's the Ideal Dose of Exercise for Optimal Health and Longevity?

Research has shown that once you reach 40 to 50 minutes of daily vigorous exercise, or just over an hour of moderate exercise (such as walking), the benefits from your efforts plateau, and further efforts do not convey additional improvements in life expectancy.

One of the largest, longest, and most recent studies5 to shed light on this "Goldilocks zone" found that those who walked or engaged in other moderate-intensity exercise for 450 minutes per week (right around one hour per day, seven days a week) lowered their risk of premature death by 39 percent compared to non-exercisers.

Those who exercised around 3.5 hours a day only reduced their mortality risk by 31 percent — the same risk reduction as those who met the guidelines of 150 minutes per week (about 20 minutes per day).

A second large-scale study,6 which focused specifically on intensity, found that spending 30 percent of your exercise time on strenuous, high-intensity activity can gain you an extra 13 percent reduction in early mortality, compared to never picking up the pace and breaking a sweat.

When it comes to endurance cardio, previous research (discussed in the TED Talk below) has shown that to optimize the health benefits from running you'll want to run 5 to 20 miles per week — the ideal amount being 10 to 15 miles per week. Once you reach 25 miles or more per week, the benefits again disappear.

Also, if you run too fast — over 8 miles an hour — the benefits tend to go away (note we're talking about speed in long distance endurance running here, not interval sprinting). Lastly, if you run seven days a week, the benefits also disappear. The ideal amount was found to be a 30-minute run, two to five days a week.

So, the key really is moderation — moderation in terms of intensity, duration, and frequency. The human body simply wasn't designed to engage in long-term extreme athletic performance, like battling ocean waves for 8 hours a day for six months straight.

Exercise Less — Move More

Some people may be a bit confused by my exercise recommendations because on the one hand, I advocate high-intensity exercise, and on the other, I've repeatedly pointed out that non-exercise movement may be even more important than a regular exercise routine.

It's really not a contradiction, if you stop and think about it. The fact of the matter is that working out really hard for an hour and then spending the majority of the rest of your day sitting down is not going to do you much good, because the latter counteracts the former.

Research has demonstrated that six hours of uninterrupted sitting counteracts the positive health benefits of one hour of exercise. So the foundation for good health is relatively constant or regular movement, i.e. avoiding sitting down as much as possible, because even just standing up produces beneficial biological effects.

I firmly believe that walking say 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day is key for health and longevity. Now that I'm a full-time resident of Florida, I walk barefoot on the beach for about one hour each day. I used to do two hours but realized that the extra time was not providing any additional health benefits based on the information reviewed in this article. Balance and moderation is the key.

This lays the groundwork or foundation, so to speak, on top of which you can then build your fitness to increasingly higher levels. For maximum benefits with a minimal time investment, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is an ideal add-on, two or three times a week — and no more than that, as your body needs to recuperate in between sessions.

Walking + HIIT = A Natural and Comfortable Combination

Benefits of HIIT include cardiovascular fitness, improved muscle growth and strength, and the generation of "anti-aging"human growth hormone (HGH), also referred to as "the fitness hormone." It also effectively stimulates your muscles to release anti-inflammatory myokines, which increase your insulin sensitivity and glucose use inside your muscles.

They also increase liberation of fat from adipose cells, and the burning of the fat within the skeletal muscle. This is why HIIT tends to be very effective for weight loss. If you've already incorporated more walking into your day, a natural progression would be to simply switch up the pace at regular intervals, interspersing bouts of speed walking followed by more casual strolling.

In study after study we find that it is this intermittent high and low intensity that appears to produce the most significant results, and there's nothing that says you have to do HIIT on an exercise machine. You can just as easily incorporate it into your daily walking routine. By exerting yourself intermittently when walking, you can dramatically increase the return of your effort without spending any extra time on it.

How and Why Extreme Cardio May Damage Your Heart

HIIT has another benefit, and that is improved safety. While you can certainly overdo it on HIIT — the Tabatha protocol for example should only be attempted by extremely fit people — endurance cardio tends to be a lot riskier, in large part because your body does not have enough time to recover and repair the damage.

Extended extreme cardio sets in motion inflammatory mechanisms that damage and prematurely age your heart. Your heart pumps about 5 quarts of blood per minute when you're sitting. When you're running, it goes up to 25 to 30 quarts, and it wasn't designed to pump this amount of blood for hours on end, day after day.

When pushed in this way, your heart basically enters a state of "volume overload" that stretches the walls of your heart muscle, literally breaking fibers apart.

Failure to fully recover between runs compounds the problem. Many endurance athletes live in a perpetual post-workout state, which resembles chronic oxidative stress. This repetitive and unrelenting damage to the heart muscle increases inflammation that leads to increased plaque formation, because plaque is your body's way of "bandaging" the lining of your inflamed arteries.

Over time, as more damage is inflicted, the heart enlarges (hypertrophy), and forms scars (cardiac fibrosis). MRIs of long-time marathoners reveal abundant scarring all over their hearts. Scientists have also measured elevated cardiac enzyme levels after extreme exercise — just like after a heart attack, which can only mean one thing: this type of exercise is damaging to your heart.

In essence, while you may appear super fit by any number of measures, you run the risk of dropping dead from cardiac arrest, which is exactly what has happened to more than one marathoner over the years.

'Moderately Fit' Wins the Race

The myth that extreme endurance cardio is good for your heart took root when, in 1977, Dr. Thomas Bassler boldly proclaimed that "completing a marathon confers immunity against heart attack." Many die-hard runners (and many doctors) still believe this to be true. But a growing number of studies7,8 on endurance athletes have demonstrated the hazards of extreme cardio, including the following:

• Marathon runners and triathletes tend to incur scarring in the center of their heart (the septum)
• Lifelong endurance athletes tend to have more coronary artery calcification9 than you'd expect to see in people with lower risk factors
• Veteran endurance athletes have a 5-fold increased risk of atrial fibrillation, a dangerous irregular heart rhythm that can progress into full cardiac arrest
• Some endurance athletes also present ventricular tachycardia (a heart rhythm faster than 100 to 120 beats per minute), which can lead to ventricular fibrillation — a leading cause of sudden cardiac death
• Excessive endurance exercise during your younger years may increase your risk of developing heart problems later in life. A Swedish study10 found that men who, at the age of 30, had exercised intensely for more than five hours a week compared to less than one hour a week, were 19 percent more likely to have developed an irregular heartbeat (a key factor in stroke risk) by the time they hit their mid-40s.

Meanwhile, daily walking or bicycling for an hour per day in older age was inversely associated with atrial fibrillation

Several more studies detailing the adverse health effects of extreme endurance cardio can be found in my previous article, "Extreme Endurance Exercise Could Be Damaging Your Heart." As noted by Dr. James O'Keefe, a research cardiologist and a former elite athlete, in the TED Talk above:

"Darwin was wrong about one thing. It's not survival of the fittest, but survival of the moderately fit ... 'We weren't born to run. We were born to walk, and we need to be walking more ... you need to be moving your body more than sitting — every chance you get, move!'"

HIIT May Be Ideal for Cardiac Patients

Whereas endurance cardio can damage your heart, HIIT has been shown to safely promote heart health, which makes sense when you consider that this form of exercise effectively mimics our ancestral ways of life. By exercising in short bursts followed by periods of recovery, you recreate exactly what your body needs for optimum health, and that includes the production of growth hormones, the burning of excess body fat, and improved cardiovascular health and stamina.

In a Canadian study,11 middle-aged men and women diagnosed with cardiovascular disease were asked to participate in a program of cycling intervals as their exclusive form of exercise. After several weeks on the program, they showed significant improvements in their health and fitness.

Most remarkably, they showed "significant improvements" in both heart and blood vessel functioning. And, contrary to what popular belief might dictate, the intense exercises did not provoke any heart problems.

It's believed that the short duration helps insulate your heart from the intensity. That said, while most people of average fitness will be able to do HIIT safely, if you have a history of heart disease or any medical concern, please get clearance from your health care professional before you embark on a HIIT program.

7 Signs You May Be Overdoing It

While HIIT is inherently safer than endurance cardio, it's very important to carefully consider the frequency of your sessions to give your body enough time to recover. If you don't, HIIT also has the potential to do more harm than good. To maximize your workout efforts, you'll want to push hard enough to challenge your body at your current level of fitness, while allowing your body to fully recuperate in between sessions.

If you're doing high intensity interval exercises, it's NOT recommended to do them more than three times a week. If you're unsure whether you may be pushing yourself too hard, the following seven symptoms may signal that you need to cut back a bit and allow your body to recover:

• Exercise leaves you exhausted instead of energized
• You get sick easily (or it takes forever to get over a cold)
• You have the blues
• You're unable to sleep or you can't seem to get enough sleep
• You have ''heavy'' legs
• You have a short fuse
• You're regularly sore for days at a time

Listen to Your Body, and Move More

When it comes to exercise, especially the more vigorous kind, be sure to listen to your body and don't ignore signals of distress. It's time to put away the outdated "no pain no gain" principle. You can fully optimize your health and fitness without killing yourself in the process — either figuratively or literally. To summarize the key points covered in this article:

• Stand up and move about as much as possible throughout the day. A stand-up desk is a worthwhile investment that can pay dividends in terms of health and longevity
• Aim to walk about 10,000 steps (or about one hour) seven days a week, at a moderate pace. Intermittently picking up the pace will further boost your health benefits by imitating HIIT. Other moderate-intensity exercises such as swimming, bicycling, etc also count of course. Your goal is to get 450 minutes of moderate-intensity movement per week
• Aim for a well-rounded fitness regimen that includes HIIT. Research has clearly demonstrated that short bursts of intense activity is safer and more effective than conventional cardio — for your heart, general health, weight loss, and overall fitness. Just make sure you allow your body to sufficiently recover between sessions.

An equation to keep in mind is that as intensity increases, frequency can be diminished. For more details on my latest fitness and workout recommendations, see my "2015 Exercise Recommendations and Update."

If you enjoy running, an ideal amount is 10 to 15 miles per week, divided up into 30-minute runs, two to five days a week.

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YES  INDEED,  IT  IS  MODERATION  IN  ALL  THINGS  GOOD  FOR  YOU.  IT  IS  EXERCISE  IN  MODERATION,  AND  LET  THE  BODY  RECOUP - RECOVER.  I'VE  SAID  IT  BEFORE  AND  WILL  SAY  IT  AGAIN,  WE  WERE  NOT  MADE  TO  RUN  MARATHONS,  WHICH  MEANS  YOU  HAVE  TO  DEVOTE  WAY  TOO  MUCH  TIME  TO  BE  ABLE  TO  RUN  THAT  DISTANCE.  AND  SO  IT  IS  WITH  MANY  "ENDURANCE"  SPORTS.  THERE  IS  ENDURANCE  HORSE  SPORTS,  TAKING  1, 2, 3, DAYS  TO  COMPLETE. ALONG  THE  WAY  AT  CERTAIN  DISTANCES  YOU  HAVE  TO  PULL  IN  WITH  YOUR  HORSE,  AND  IT  IS  VET  CHECKED;  THE  VETERINARIAN  SAYS  YOUR  HORSE  CAN  NOT  GO  ON,  YOU  ARE  OUT  OF  THE  RACE..... JUST  THAT  SIMPLE.  SO  IT’S  MODERATION  EVEN  FOR  HORSES;  AND  IT’S  MODERATION  YOU  NEED  TO  AIM  FOR.

Keith Hunt