Speaker 1: Welcome to Spark Faith with me, doctor Chris Sargent. This
Speaker 1: show is about renewed health, rooted in truth and restored
Speaker 1: by grace. What does finding health look like for you?
Speaker 1: Do you have a vision for your future self and
Speaker 1: a way to get there. I'm doctor Chris and after
Speaker 1: thirty three years in functional medicine and a lifelong journey
Speaker 1: through brain health, weight loss, hormones, mindset, and faith, I
Speaker 1: know that real transformation doesn't come from willpower or white
Speaker 1: knuckling your way to wellness. It comes from gratitude.
Speaker 2: Honoring your body as the temple that God created.
Speaker 1: This show is about body stewardship, not shame.
Speaker 2: It's about rewiring your mindset, your metabolism, and your spirit
Speaker 2: to find lasting health without the grind. I'll help you
Speaker 2: cut through the noise, see opportunities instead of obstacles, and
Speaker 2: finally lived the.
Speaker 1: Healthy, purposeful life you will created for. Let's spark faith
Speaker 1: and transformation together. Spark Faith starts now. Well, Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: how are you today? My name is doctor Chris Sargent,
Speaker 1: and I want to welcome you back to the Spark
Speaker 1: Faith Show. I'm back live. I think the last two
Speaker 1: episodes or maybe three, we were two episodes we were
Speaker 1: recorded ahead of time because I got married. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm back and it's really good to be live again.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you it's been a little bit
Speaker 1: of a crazy morning already and I yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: today we are going to talk about the things that
Speaker 1: nobody told you about aging. And I'm really passionate about this,
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to warn you ahead of time.
Speaker 1: I can get really cranked up over this because I
Speaker 1: feel like so many y'all like, just buy into this,
Speaker 1: Well I'm getting older, blah blah blah. Well now I'm
Speaker 1: thirty five or I'm forty five or whatever age you
Speaker 1: throw out there, and you're just you just resign yourself
Speaker 1: to that kind of feeling, whatever that feeling might be.
Speaker 1: And I am here to tell you that at sixty two,
Speaker 1: I really don't feel much different than I did when
Speaker 1: I was forty and some days twenty you know so,
Speaker 1: And not that I have an unrealistic expectation of what
Speaker 1: I can do, because there are definitely days that I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: there it is, yep, shouldn't have done so much. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's super important to understand that
Speaker 1: aging is not what we hear on social media. It's
Speaker 1: definitely not what we hear in the news. It's not
Speaker 1: what our doctors tell us and our traditional doctors anyway.
Speaker 1: It is really just aging is just not this process
Speaker 1: of decline. It doesn't have to be, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that that's that little saying it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be is what I hang on to a lot. My
Speaker 1: mom hung on to it. She was ninety four, almost
Speaker 1: ninety four when she passed. And my dad is ninety
Speaker 1: four now, and you know, he still walks a mile
Speaker 1: every day. He's you know, he's got some mental things happening,
Speaker 1: and he's ninety four and it just started a few
Speaker 1: years ago, so like he's lived a super long, healthy life.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, it just doesn't have to
Speaker 1: look like this decline that starts when you're thirty five
Speaker 1: or forty or whatever age you know you have in
Speaker 1: your head, because really, this is this aging thing is
Speaker 1: just an ongoing process of adaptation. And I really think
Speaker 1: that a lot of women expect less from themselves every decade. However,
Speaker 1: your body can reach main incredibly adaptable regardless of your age.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, right, our goal is not to
Speaker 1: become twenty five again. I mean, some of y'all may
Speaker 1: think that, and I'm just not one of those people
Speaker 1: that thinks that that's important. I want to be the
Speaker 1: best that I can at the age that I am,
Speaker 1: and I also want to plan for being able to
Speaker 1: get on the floor with my grandkids when I'm eighty, right,
Speaker 1: I want to be able to get on the floor
Speaker 1: of my great Garan kids. Maybe when I'm eighty five
Speaker 1: or ninety, I don't So that's what we're I'm planning for.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Whatever I'm doing today is going to take me down
Speaker 1: the road twenty years, right, And we know that out
Speaker 1: of health anyway, right, Like diabetes doesn't Type two diabetes
Speaker 1: doesn't start when you're forty five and get diagnosed. That
Speaker 1: started twenty years prior. That started when you got out
Speaker 1: of call and got a job where you were sitting
Speaker 1: and didn't go to the gym as much, maybe didn't
Speaker 1: eat as well because you couldn't afford it or whatever.
Speaker 1: But that's when those things start. They start twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and we're just where you're at in your health is
Speaker 1: probably whatever happened over the last twenty ish years or so.
Speaker 1: It could be something that remarkable that happened. You know,
Speaker 1: you may have had an accident, you may have had
Speaker 1: a late pregnancy, you may have had a pregnancy that
Speaker 1: just like took you off sideways. However, the goal again
Speaker 1: is not to become twenty five again, the goal is
Speaker 1: to continue building at forty five, so that fifty five
Speaker 1: looks like forty five, and that sixty five looks like
Speaker 1: forty five or were thereabouts, right, and that eighty five
Speaker 1: can look like sixty five. That's the forward thinking of
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about today. So what if
Speaker 1: one of the most damaging things about aging isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: aging itself. What if it's the story, right, this is
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about already. What if it's the
Speaker 1: story that we've been told about aging? All right? Think
Speaker 1: about that again. What if it's aging in itself isn't
Speaker 1: the problem. What if it's the story that you've been
Speaker 1: told about aging, or that we've been told about aging,
Speaker 1: and the story that you're telling yourself because of whatever
Speaker 1: your parents told you about themselves aging, Like, can you
Speaker 1: see where there are some generational tendencies where oh, well
Speaker 1: my mom did this, so I'm going to be that
Speaker 1: way and where do we need to break up some
Speaker 1: of those generational tendencies? Right, So the story kind of
Speaker 1: goes like this, Right, everything slows down, everything declines, everything
Speaker 1: gets decrepit. Right, you start like stiffness, all the things,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be in pain, Right, it's inevitable. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be weaker, it's inevitable. Fatigue. Well, of course I'm tired,
Speaker 1: I'm old. And so while there are certain changes that
Speaker 1: do occur with age, and I don't want to dismiss
Speaker 1: that completely, that's just not the whole story, right, because
Speaker 1: what if what if it's deficiencies over time that's created
Speaker 1: the fatigue or a lack of resources, like we've talked
Speaker 1: about on some of my other episodes. What if it's
Speaker 1: that instead of aging, right, it's creating the symptoms of aging. However,
Speaker 1: what if you started recovering and putting yourself into nervous
Speaker 1: system recovery, into gastrointestinal recovery, mental health recovery, Like, what
Speaker 1: if we put ourselves into recovery mode? What would happen
Speaker 1: even at X age right? Forty five fifty five sixty five.
Speaker 1: I mean I mentioned it often that I kind of
Speaker 1: crashed a little bit at last Christmas. And you know,
Speaker 1: I can see that four or five bad nights of
Speaker 1: sleep make a big difference in my energy level and
Speaker 1: my ability to concentrate. And so I'm much much more
Speaker 1: aware of recovery time now and how much more important
Speaker 1: that is. Like I didn't sleep all Monday night, and
Speaker 1: I was supposed to go in on Tuesday for leg day,
Speaker 1: like Tuesday's leg day, and I realized that I was
Speaker 1: not recovered well. So I waited until yesterday for leg day.
Speaker 1: And when I woke up this morning, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I definitely had leg day. And I usually take a
Speaker 1: day off after leg day before I go back into
Speaker 1: arm and legs back to back, So I really I
Speaker 1: decided today that I was just going to take a
Speaker 1: really long walk with a dog. We walked like three
Speaker 1: and a half miles, got into zone two, which is
Speaker 1: that great happy space of cardiovascular time, and like, okay,
Speaker 1: So I just adapted to the way that my body's
Speaker 1: feeling and really becoming really more cognizant of that. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Your body never stops adapting. Okay. We
Speaker 1: adapt to exercise easy or not. We adapt to learning.
Speaker 1: We can adapt to stress, to some extent. Right, we
Speaker 1: adapt to our environment hot, cold, whatever, We adapt, adapt
Speaker 1: to our relationships, some good, some not so good, and
Speaker 1: we adapt to challenges. And that doesn't stop at forty fifty,
Speaker 1: seventy eighty five, right, life, all those things happen. And
Speaker 1: you know there's no lack of stories even on social
Speaker 1: media about people learning new things at an older age. Right,
Speaker 1: new languages, new travels, new skills, dancing, all these things
Speaker 1: when you're over seventy over eighty, right, you see the
Speaker 1: woman ninety two year old woman scaling a wall or
Speaker 1: some silliness. But like, that's the capacity that we can have.
Speaker 1: We can build muscle up until the day we die,
Speaker 1: if we choose to, we can build it. Does it
Speaker 1: come easy like it did in our twenties, Probably not? However, right,
Speaker 1: it can still happen. We can still adapt to that.
Speaker 1: We can improve our balance like standing on one foot
Speaker 1: later in life, we can improve our cardiovascular fitness. We
Speaker 1: can strengthen relationships, we can shift relationships, we can shift
Speaker 1: our mental health, and we can definitely grow spiritually throughout
Speaker 1: our life. And then what wisdom do we get to
Speaker 1: bring into that right later in our life? So aging
Speaker 1: is really about adaptation, and it doesn't eliminate adaptation. The
Speaker 1: body remains trainable, and I love that, right, the brain
Speaker 1: remains trainable. When I first started seminary a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, y'all, I couldn't concentrate for more than about
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty minutes. Like, I just didn't have the
Speaker 1: capacity the brain train that I needed to move into
Speaker 1: the amount of reading that was necessary. And I hear
Speaker 1: it all the time. Oh I fall asleep when I read,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Yes, and this was my new job.
Speaker 1: This was part of my new job, right, Like I
Speaker 1: have to read a lot, and so over the past
Speaker 1: two and a half years, i've I can sit down
Speaker 1: and read for three or four hours. Do I take breaks? Sure,
Speaker 1: about every hour and a half. However I can get
Speaker 1: right back in it. And it's just a trained brain.
Speaker 1: So our body remains trainable, our brain remains trainable, on
Speaker 1: our soul remains teachable. So in all of that, it's
Speaker 1: really about capacity and not perfection. And I have said this,
Speaker 1: like progress is so much more impressive than perfection. Right,
Speaker 1: progress is so much more impressive than perfection. And I
Speaker 1: know that I spent a lot of years pursuing perfection.
Speaker 1: And I know that my audience has spent a lot
Speaker 1: of years pursuing perfection because the chatrict's like, right, the
Speaker 1: perfect diet, the perfect workout, the perfect fat reducing thing,
Speaker 1: the perfect routine, the perfect body whatever. But life really
Speaker 1: doesn't reward perfection. You will be rewarded in capacity and
Speaker 1: your ability to do more right, your ability to recover better,
Speaker 1: your ability to adapt and respond as opposed to react right,
Speaker 1: to carry responsibility in a way that allows Jesus into
Speaker 1: that heavy and into the trials of your life that
Speaker 1: you realize that you need help. And it's not weakness
Speaker 1: to ask for that help. We navigate difficulties so much
Speaker 1: better without falling apart. So think about two women facing
Speaker 1: the same challenge. Right, one is completely overwhelmed and the
Speaker 1: other one handles it well most of the time. The
Speaker 1: difference isn't about intelligence at all, right, It isn't motivation.
Speaker 1: The overhepwhelmed woman wants to be able to handle it.
Speaker 1: It's really about capacity and her ability to step back
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, what's important here, what needs to come first?
Speaker 1: And sometimes when we are in overwhelmed, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to see that, and we haven't trained ourselves to slow
Speaker 1: down in those moments of overwhelm, so that like overwhelmed
Speaker 1: to me, just feels like this giant tsunami. But if
Speaker 1: we just stand still, the wave will pass right and
Speaker 1: we can take a deep breath and as the tide recedes,
Speaker 1: we can go Okay, that was there's the tsunami. Now
Speaker 1: I can look at it and figure out a better
Speaker 1: way to handle it. So I think that there's a
Speaker 1: reality in midlife that we are managing so many things
Speaker 1: careers and marriages and aging parents, adult children, finances, sometimes
Speaker 1: some health concerns. So the goal isn't perfection. The goal
Speaker 1: is becoming strong enough mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically to carry
Speaker 1: what life requires. Right. Y'all know, I took care of
Speaker 1: my mom for five years, and there was a place
Speaker 1: in there that I had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: take care of myself so that I could take care
Speaker 1: of her in a healthier way. Right, So that's where
Speaker 1: the goal is becoming strong enough, And it's not about
Speaker 1: carrying things perfectly. It's about becoming strong enough to carry
Speaker 1: things better, right, not some kind of perfection that you
Speaker 1: see on Instagram. In those moments and y'all. You know
Speaker 1: that strength is not necessarily bigger muscles, right, And you
Speaker 1: know that we all think like, Okay, some squad, some dumbbell,
Speaker 1: some gym, I hate the gym, blah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: love the gym. Put that's because I put my air
Speaker 1: pods in and just do my thing. I don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to anybody else anyway. But yes, physical strength does matter,
Speaker 1: but it can also show up not just in that
Speaker 1: physical strength, right, the ability to move through life and
Speaker 1: pop up and downstairs or whatever, but it also shows
Speaker 1: up an emotional strength. And thinking about this this morning,
Speaker 1: like our mental and emotional ability to accept whatever things
Speaker 1: are happening at the current moment, you know, like not
Speaker 1: just not let it go, right, We do have to
Speaker 1: let go, but in that process we have to open
Speaker 1: our hand and look at what is happening here. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't just like okay, let it go. No, it's
Speaker 1: looking at it and saying, well, okay, I see this thing,
Speaker 1: and I have to accept that this is where I'm at. Right,
Speaker 1: It's really about the ability to accept and the quicker
Speaker 1: that we can accept what's happening, the quicker we can
Speaker 1: move into how to solve it. So aging is about
Speaker 1: being able to move quicker into solutions and not hanging
Speaker 1: on to things from the past. What about relational strength,
Speaker 1: your ability to communicate and forgive and stay connected and
Speaker 1: stay engaged in all of that? And spiritual strength like
Speaker 1: our trust in God when circumstances are so challenging that
Speaker 1: we don't see a way through, but He already sees
Speaker 1: our way through. So the strongest women I know really
Speaker 1: are not necessarily the women who live the most way, right.
Speaker 1: They are the women who have really developed this capacity
Speaker 1: in every area of their life and are working on
Speaker 1: capacity in an area that they know that it's not
Speaker 1: perfect and it's never going to be perfect. So I
Speaker 1: just I want to kind of come into the last
Speaker 1: little bit of this with some maybe some hidden strength builders. Right.
Speaker 1: We may think that strength comes from comfort, like we oh,
Speaker 1: I need some comfort food or I just need to
Speaker 1: tell and be comfy, But really we gain strength through challenge, right,
Speaker 1: and recovery from those challenges. We've talked about muscle recovery,
Speaker 1: and that's where the strength is built is in the recovery,
Speaker 1: not necessarily at the gym. But this isn't this is
Speaker 1: not overwhelming challenge this is appropriate challenge. That's what's going
Speaker 1: to build strength, Like muscles become stronger when they're challenged,
Speaker 1: but also when they recover well, resilience grows because adversity
Speaker 1: is encountered and we can recover well. Right, Wisdom develops
Speaker 1: through experience and what we see from from our years
Speaker 1: along the way and gather that up right in recovery
Speaker 1: and slowing down to see what we've learned, and faith
Speaker 1: really deep and through this crazy dependence that when we
Speaker 1: lean into that, it gets better, right, it just gets better.
Speaker 1: So we're not talking about trauma. We're talking about growth,
Speaker 1: right the body. The body really grows when demands are
Speaker 1: balanced with recovery. And this is what we connected this.
Speaker 1: I want to connect this to my last episode because
Speaker 1: that we talked a lot about recovery and how important
Speaker 1: recovery is. Stress without recovery just leads to exhaustion, right,
Speaker 1: Challenge without recovery leads to actually lower strength and more overwhelm.
Speaker 1: But challenge with recovery leads to growth. And strength is
Speaker 1: built in this space between the challenge and the recovery,
Speaker 1: and that's where we build the strength that we're talking
Speaker 1: about at this time. So let's bring in stewardship, because
Speaker 1: you all know that this is about stewarding our body
Speaker 1: and stewarding things around us. But one of the cool
Speaker 1: things in Scripture is that growth is expected right from
Speaker 1: the beginning. From the beginning, right, Trees grow, Seeds are planted,
Speaker 1: and plants grow, Disciples grow, Faith grows. God designed living
Speaker 1: things to develop, and he expects that development in our
Speaker 1: faith too. We're not just supposed to remain stagnant. Yep
Speaker 1: I believe in Christ. Yep I believe in God. And
Speaker 1: that's where we stop.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This is sanctification. This is growth and stewardship isn't preserving
Speaker 1: yourself in some sort of comfort bubble, right, it's participating
Speaker 1: in healthy growth and strength. And as we age, we
Speaker 1: can look back on the times that we kind of
Speaker 1: kept ourselves in a bubble and isolated, and finally when
Speaker 1: we burst out of it was when the growth and
Speaker 1: the change happened. So it's really about participating in healthy growth.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This means you continue to learn, Right, I'm in seminary.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you need to go to seminary, but
Speaker 1: maybe you get on your second language that you always wanted,
Speaker 1: or the piano or something that you always wanted to learn,
Speaker 1: Like you want to learn how to paint, go learn
Speaker 1: how to paint right movement. If you've never been to
Speaker 1: the gym before, that is fine. Get your sneakers. They
Speaker 1: don't have to be cute, but they need to be new,
Speaker 1: and go to hit the sidewalk or a treadmill or
Speaker 1: someplace that you can enjoy nature just for a little while.
Speaker 1: What about serving people right That gets us out of
Speaker 1: ourself and into the world, and we can get so
Speaker 1: much more out of that. What about connection? We can
Speaker 1: connect in that service place we can trust we can
Speaker 1: adapt through every single season of our life life. So
Speaker 1: stewardship isn't really maintaining what you have, it's faithfully developing
Speaker 1: what you've been given. So anyway, over the last four weeks,
Speaker 1: we've learned that metabolism is life, stress requires recovery, fatigue
Speaker 1: absolutely reflects demands, and strength builds capacity. And so next
Speaker 1: week we're going to wrap all those up into a
Speaker 1: really fun episode. Because health is not about perfection. Health
Speaker 1: is not the absence of symptoms. Health is not a
Speaker 1: perfect lab report. Health is the ability to adapt, recover,
Speaker 1: and engage fully in the life that God has given
Speaker 1: you and that's exactly where we're headed next week. So
Speaker 1: the body, the mind, emotions, the spirit can really remain
Speaker 1: capable of growth and adaptation throughout your life. Strength is
Speaker 1: not about perfect It's about the capacity to meet the
Speaker 1: demands of life with resilience and wisdom and faithfulness. Right.
Speaker 1: So I want to leave you with that today and
Speaker 1: just remember that we are here to renew health rooted
Speaker 1: in truth and restored by grace. And I love you guys,
Speaker 1: Hit subscribe, hit like, find me on social and you know,
Speaker 1: follow me? Why not? I might have a couple good
Speaker 1: things to say. I've been out here for a long time,
Speaker 1: so love you guys, have a fantastic day. Love you bye.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Spark Faith with me, Doctor Chris Sargent.
Speaker 1: This show is about renewed health, rooted in truth and
Speaker 1: restored by grace. Tune in every Thursday morning at nine
Speaker 1: thirty am Pacific on the Transformation Talk Radio for more
Speaker 1: simple faith fue old stuff to live the vision God
Speaker 1: placed in your heart. Are you ready to take the
Speaker 1: next step? Schedule a Discovery call or connect with me
Speaker 1: at doctor Chris Sargeant dot com. That's d r k
Speaker 1: R I S sergeant dot com. While you're there, download
Speaker 1: my free ebook Endless Energy, The six non Negotiable Keys
Speaker 1: to Endless Energy, and sign up for an upcoming masterclass.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to subscribe, like share the show, and I'd
Speaker 1: love to connect with you on social media at doctor
Speaker 1: Chris Sargeant. Let's keep sparking faith and transformation together. You
Speaker 1: can't wait to see y'all next time.