Unlocking Health: Overcoming Bitterness for a Better Life

In this podcast episode, hosts Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth discuss the detrimental health effects of bitterness. They explore how unresolved anger and resentment can manifest physically, contributing to serious diseases like cancer and heart disease. The conversation emphasizes the importance of emotional well-being and how forgiving others can significantly impact our health. 

Through research and personal anecdotes, they illustrate that choosing forgiveness over bitterness can extend one's life and improve overall wellness. They encourage listeners to confront grievances constructively, suggesting forgiveness as a powerful tool for maintaining health and preventing disease.

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Transcript

[00:07] Dr. Rodney: Welcome to Stance for Health podcast with Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth, where becoming healthy is not complicated.

[00:16] Control your health by focusing on six areas of life that we teach you so you finally have the energy you have to do what you want instead of being a victim of your age.

[00:27] I have over 20 years experience working as a chiropractor and Karen is an author, speaker, and longevity coach.

[00:34] We've seen how a tiny change in your habits today can open up your life to a powerful future. Start today and take your stance for Health.

[00:49] Dr. Rodney: Hi, and welcome to Stance for Health podcast. I'm seated here with Karen Joanne Sebastian Wirth, Hope Lady. I'm going to always use that moniker in varying forms. Then what are we talking about today, Karen?

[01:04] Karen: We're talking about the powerful toxic emotion of bitterness in how it can impact someone's health.

[01:14] Dr. Rodney: Bitterness. Okay, is there any clear definition that you have available for bitterness in this context?

[01:23] Karen: What they're talking about is when you have that anger, resentment and disappointment that you just can't let go of and you become bitter about a situation and that it really can begin to affect your physical health.

[01:39] Dr. Rodney: Okay, so it's not a one and done situation necessarily. It could be a lifetime of anger and resentment and feeling wronged.

[01:48] Karen: I think so. I think that there are many people that from childhood feel like they've had the wrong card dealt to them. The negativity and their response to it, those bitter emotions that they don't seem to be able to overcome.

[02:03] Dr. Rodney: Okay, so bitterness is obviously one thing. So what we're talking about today is what physical effect has immediately when bitterness is elicited in the body.

[02:17] Karen: From the research that we were doing, it seems like there's several of them. And it's a little bit frightening when you think about it, because the associated diseases from this research is from Carl Rausch from Concordia University Department of Psychology.

[02:35] They're saying things all the way from cancer, autoimmune diseases, anger that leads to heart disease, even blood sugar levels rising. It's pretty much what we are facing in our society when these are the diseases that are taking out most people.

[02:53] Dr. Rodney: Okay, so the takeaway from this already, if you're listening to this and making note of certain key points, is it's not necessarily what you eat all the time. It might be what's eating you.

[03:08] Karen: Oh, well said.

[03:10] Dr. Rodney: Right?

[03:11] Karen: Yes.

[03:12] Dr. Rodney: And so if somebody asks you, well, what's eating you? It could literally be you could be experiencing bitterness. Is that a reality?

[03:20] Karen: What I'm seeing in this research is personality traits of anger, hostility versus optimism, that are affecting longevity and physical illnesses. In 1930, they did a study of young Catholic nuns, and they asked him to them to write short personal essays about their lives in the 1930s.

[03:42] They came back 60 years later, so this is one of the longest ever done,

[03:48] and evaluated those essays for positive emotional content. And they found that the nuns that expressed the most positive emotions had up to 10 years longer just by seeing a difficult situation with a positive view versus the negative.

[04:06] Dr. Rodney: Wow. Say your life expectancy is in the 90s. What we're really saying is your life expectancy could be cut short by 10 years. And you could have a lot of these associated diseases, including dying of cancer.

[04:19] We can just say that goes back to a scriptural reference that bitterness is as rottenness to the bones is perhaps referring to some of these associated diseases.

[04:30] Karen: Because what happens with cancer, the autoimmune system is wacko and the body starts to feed. So we go back to what are you feeding on?

[04:40] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, exactly. Not just what you're eating, but what's eating you. Yeah. Wow.

[04:45] Karen: So when we think about. Okay, let's just sit back and say, have you been on the road recently, say on a freeway,

[04:56] and experienced some. Someone else, hopefully with road rage? What is happening inside of them, doc?

[05:05] Dr. Rodney: Well, that is a great question, because not the least of which is the adrenaline that's associated with it. The body is actually checking for what's safe.

[05:17] Karen: Yes.

[05:17] Dr. Rodney: It checks with the brain, it checks with the amygdala. It checks with the rudimentary part of your nervous system. Then it checks with the heart, and it checks with the adrenals.

[05:26] And finally, the adrenals have their effects.

[05:29] Karen: And that digestion basically stops, and the blood becomes thicker so that in case they are fighting blatantly death, I mean, all of these things. What about perspiration?

[05:40] Dr. Rodney: Yes. So what I'm actually referring to is it's almost like the girl that goes out with a bow and arrow and those people that are hunting each other. The Hunger Games.

[05:51] Hunger Games, Right.

[05:52] Karen: Oh, that's brutal.

[05:53] Dr. Rodney: Your body is having this killer behind them.

[05:56] Karen: Killed sort of literally in that move.

[05:58] Dr. Rodney: This fight or flight life response ties in to some of the emotion of bitterness.

[06:04] Karen: And the problem that we have as a society, though, Is that this was meant to be a temporary survival.

[06:11] In other words, my survival could depend on whether I get away from that bear or that lion or. Or whatever is threatening me. And then I go back to calm and normal.

[06:22] But what happens to us is we can live in a constant state of that.

[06:27] Dr. Rodney: But I think what we're both saying is it's either real or perceived.

[06:31] Karen: Exactly.

[06:32] Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

[06:33] So if I can take a moment as a chiropractor to speak to this is part of what I promised in a podcast was to answer some of the questions as to why people get misalignments.

[06:46] Well, let's say that your body, instead of having a normal flow of information and regulation of the endocrine system, the, the reflex arc between the pituitary and the adrenal glands.

[07:00] Right.

[07:00] Karen: The hypothalamus, HPA axis.

[07:02] Dr. Rodney: HPA axis.

[07:04] So the, the parts of your spine that are associated with that reflex arc and the associated organs. What if your body continues to be stuck in that loop? Would there be a dysregulation of that in the areas associated with the spine?

[07:23] That's why we say yes. Physical, chemical and emotional stresses produce misalignments. Somewhere around 70% of the chiropractors out there still call it subluxation. Absolutely. Misalignment,

[07:38] dysregulation,

[07:41] all of these different aspects of it. So as someone who is dealing with the issues of bitterness,

[07:50] are we to the place yet where we can actually say that there's not just a chiropractic solution to this, but are there some ways to get help outside of it?

[08:00] Karen: I think so. Because when we recognize that we may have stepped into that area of bitterness, if we're harboring resentment, if we just can't let it go, then it's time to really focus on what it is that we need to do with that.

[08:19] And that is forgive.

[08:22] Dr. Rodney: So you're saying that one of the reasons why we say the Our Father is early on in the prayer process is forgive our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.

[08:35] Trespasses, well, that's creating bitterness and you have to diffuse that. You have to cast that care. You have to pray that through. And in a way, you're having a heart to heart talk with God about it.

[08:45] Karen: And you may have to forgive that on a daily basis until that becomes a part of your thought process. Because if we don't forgive, we're going to have higher risk for heart attack.

[08:58] We're not going to be able to sleep, we're going to have pain. We can have anxiety, depression and stress.

[09:04] That is the part that I've often said when people say I just can't forgive, that is that they are carrying that person around with them in their vaccine.

[09:13] Dr. Rodney: If we're talking about poison here, and you intend by your anger and your bitterness and that towards someone, if that is by itself poison,

[09:25] then that poison that you intend to give them is actually poisoning you.

[09:30] Karen: That's the sad truth about it, is that many times we're carrying around bitterness and resentment and that person has moved on or maybe was never even aware of it because many times people don't want to go and confront.

[09:47] It has been modeled for us. That confrontation is scary and wrong when it isn't necessarily. But that person that's wronged you, you may never get to confront that person. It may have been someone who's passed.

[10:01] Dr. Rodney: I love this about you. I never quite got the distinction. I thought that the two things I'm about to say were synonymous.

[10:11] I thought that they were not mutually exclusive. I thought they were inseparable.

[10:18] Is that conflict and confrontation were the same and they're just not.

[10:24] Karen: They're not. Because conflict is. I'm going to fight you.

[10:28] That puts us right in the middle of that fight.

[10:32] Or a avoiding confrontation is the flight. There is no way I'm going to talk to you. Either way, you've made that response go into your body to where it's affecting you physically.

[10:46] So conflict is not what you want. You want confrontation. That doesn't have to be a fight and you don't have to end up running away from it. Basically, you've got to acknowledge what's happened.

[10:59] Just the fact of acknowledging that someone wronged you helps. That's the first step. Acknowledge it.

[11:06] Dr. Rodney: I love what your dad used to say. It's like in terms of forgiveness, he'd say, well, were they wrong? He'd ask the question, were they wrong? And you'd say, yes, they were wrong.

[11:17] Well, then they do need to be forgiven.

[11:20] Karen: I love that about him. And he was one of the examples to me that there were some things that happened to him in ministry as a missionary that I carried around with bitterness.

[11:32] And at the end of his life, he had so completely forgotten about that. And he invited that person who had inflicted that pain on our family.

[11:43] And that person felt that they needed to tell me that they were the ones that had inflicted that pain. And I was like, what? And it made me realize that we can forgive because that's the part of it that doesn't mean that that person has to make it right.

[12:04] Now, if I've done something that hurts someone else, I need to make amends.

[12:10] But the reality is many times I will never know what brought them to that place. And so I need to forgive and just let go.

[12:21] Dr. Rodney: So the in part, the solution is when we say have a heart to Heart, basically, it's kind of a knee to knee, face to face.

[12:31] Basically an eye to eye conversation with someone. A heart to heart. In other words, this is how I felt when I heard you say this.

[12:41] Karen: And be very careful to not have the. You attack.

[12:45] Dr. Rodney: Yes.

[12:46] Karen: You did this, you did that. It's all your fault. It's more. I felt this way. I felt offended.

[12:54] That is what I wanted to ask you about. And most of the time when I've done this, it's scary, but most of the times when I've done this, that person is like,

[13:08] oh, Kiran, I'm so sorry. That was never my intention. Actually. What was going on that day is then, then they go on to tell me what was happening in their lives.

[13:19] They go on to tell me how, what they were going through and they weren't even aware of the tone that they used. But even if they were not,

[13:29] even if they did do something wrong, holding onto that grudge is not going to help you and you just need to move on.

[13:37] Dr. Rodney: As I was doing a Facebook live earlier,

[13:40] one of my old colleagues, who's still a friend on Facebook, chimes in. Laziness destroys ambition, she says. Anger destroys wisdom. Fear destroys hope, Ego destroys wisdom. And then jealousy destroys peace and doubt destroys confidence.

[14:00] Now, turning it around, I'm going to give credit to her, Janita Herdman, but I'm also going to credit to the person she gave credit. It says, ambition destroys laziness, Wisdom destroys anger.

[14:13] Hope destroys fear. Growth destroys ego. Peace destroys jealousy. Confidence destroys doubt, and God will supply our needs. Credit to Brian Trent.

[14:24] Karen: Thank you, Brian. That is so good. Thank you, Janita. Yes. Ultimately, I have to know that regardless of what others have done, I always have a choice.

[14:37] The other part is there's always two sides to every pancake. No matter how flat it is, there's always another person's perspective. And just saying, I forgive you to move on and basically just say, you know, I'm not going to hold a grudge, right?

[14:56] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, yeah, you're not going to hold a grudge.

[15:00] Karen: I don't want to get sick because.

[15:02] Dr. Rodney: You don't want to get sick. It can be selfish.

[15:04] Karen: It is. My mom also had a saying. If they can live with that, I can too.

[15:09] Dr. Rodney: Right.

[15:10] Karen: So I just have to give it to the Lord. And she would hurt people. Hurt people.

[15:15] But healed people heal people. And that's what our prayer is for you today. That if you are feeling some bitterness, talk to someone that you trust. Now be careful who you talk to because you don't want them to take up an offense like I did for my parents.

[15:31] But just get guidance, get help to let go of it. Because your health is the biggest wealth you have.

[15:42] If you lose your health, nothing else really matters. And is hanging onto a grudge worth it?

[15:50] Dr. Rodney: That's so good. You know, I love these tools and what they remind me of is you. You typically have tools in the books that you've written. Is that right?

[16:01] Karen: Yes.

[16:02] Dr. Rodney: And I always love that at the end of the chapter you have these hope tools.

[16:08] I'm hearing tools today. And that we're already exercising some, but I can definitely do better at some of these others and continue to practice confronting rather than conflicting.

[16:21] Karen: Yes.

[16:21] Dr. Rodney: Or running or fawning. I used to be professional, Fauna. It was almost like fleeing, but I was really not engaging the reality of what I was really feeling in a situation.

[16:33] Karen: And you just wanted to fit in, right? And the other one is to freeze. Those are the additional two words that start with F. For that,

[16:44] let's do our part to handle what comes our way.

[16:52] With positivity and with faith and most of all with hope that no matter what we're going through right now, it's going to have a good outcome. And in my life, that's how it's been.

[17:05] Dr. Rodney: This such an intimate group. We have people that are listening to us. This might be a highlight in your week. You don't feel as alone when you hear some of these things because these tools are things that have worked for us.

[17:18] They're biblical and. And they've been recommended by Jesus himself. I want you to realize that it's not just been something that's. We're just preaching. It's something that we've lived.

[17:30] And so this will help you take your stance for health. Thanks for listening today.

[17:38] Dr. Rodney: Thank you for joining us at Stance for Health podcast, where getting healthy and staying that way are not as complicated as you might think. Subscribe now and discover steps and small changes that can increase your energy and open the door to vibrant health and longevity.

[17:57] If this podcast has been helpful, please write a review. We'll see you next time.