God Made the Family and God Made the Body

We know God has a plan for the family. You know, a lot of people look at God's laws, God's rules as oppressive.

And obviously if you want to do your own thing and you feel you have certain desires and interests and the laws of God or the rules of God are against them, you can feel that things are oppressive. God made us and created us to be blessed. And that as our maker and creator, he knows what's best for us. And his order is always the right order, the good order. And when we honor it and follow it, not just by outward religious observance, but by recognizing these as principles of life, we will be blessed. Michael Brown, welcome to today's broadcast. We're going to focus first on the issue of family, children, God's order, God's plan, what's best, and give you food for thought, recommend an important book to you, as well as put a vision in your heart for a global children's movement.

I will not be taking calls. I want to devote the entire time I have now in the first half of this hour to Katie Faust. She's been on the air with me before. I began to see some of her writings and some of her talks years back and thought, boy, she has clarity.

She knows that of which she speaks. She's written a book together with Stacey Manning. I wrote an endorsement for the book, was really impressed with it, them before us, why we need a global children's rights movement. So without further ado, Katie, welcome back to the line of fire. I'm so glad to talk with you again.

It's always wonderful to have you. And I'm so thrilled with this book, Katie. Before we get into the book, why do you feel that on some level you are qualified to write this book? Well, it's kind of funny, because I don't think I am, right?

But from a Christian perspective, what God calls you to, he qualifies you for. So this has been a learning process for me. I got into this whole marriage-family debate when the gay marriage debate was kind of ramping up, and I heard advocates on the other side say that kids don't need moms and dads.

And I thought, well, that's just crazy. And then, of course, they came out with the line of, well, if you don't support gay marriage, you hate gay people and you're a bigot. And my mom has been in a relationship with another woman for 30 years, and I love her and I love her partner. And so I can tell you, as somebody who's worked with kids and understands that any time they lose their mother or father, there is pain and often lifelong suffering that goes along with that. And that's why we should support traditional marriage.

And I can tell you confidently that you can do that without hating gay people, because me and almost every other Christian and conservative that I know feels the same way. So this book has kind of grown out of that slowly evolving advocacy going from kids need moms and dads to, oh my gosh, every single area of marriage and family is obsessively focused on adults and what they want. And kids are the constant losers. I remember when No Fault Divorce came out that that was that was going to be for the good of the kids, you know, that they shouldn't see their mom and dad in such tension. And it's for the good of the kids, obviously, provided an outlet for some unhappy marriages, but it didn't help the kids, did it?

Well, you know, it's so funny because I was talking with another media outlet yesterday and they said, when did all this begin? And I said, I honestly the narrative began with No Fault Divorce and the narrative that has carried itself all the way through all these different issues, you know, from divorce to the definition of marriage to same sex parenting to sperm and egg donation and surrogacy and and all of the next, you know, chapters that are coming like polygamy at all of them center around the same false narrative. And that is if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy.

The problem is that the statistics don't support that. And now what we've done in this book is for all those subjects I just listed, we have given you the stories of kids that shows that those narratives that if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy, that it's a simple it's just simply a lie. I'll tell you, you know, we know from studying family structure and now we have the stories to prove what kids want to be happy. And what they need to be happy is they need their mother's love their father's love and stability.

And all of that comes together in the home of their married mother and father. And what I think is so important Katie's is this, the whole theme of them before us again friends the name of the new book, co authored by Katie Faust and Stacey Manning forward by Robert George if, if you're know much about Christian conservative thinkers in fact he wrote the foreword for it tells you a lot. But what's happened with with gay activists and things like that is they won't argue so much with statistics and, and things like that it's going to be more story narrative. So here's a picture of, of Bill and Bob, and their, their 14 year old adopted handicapped child, and maybe the Irish set of the family dog and say, well who's going to say they shouldn't be able to have that kid and who's got you know, in other words, it paints something very conveying compelling and then maybe one of the kids was beat up at school because he was called the sissy so that appeals to us, we don't want to be bigots we want to be caring and embracing of all people, but but then we're not allowed to ask the question well well hang on this one little thing here what's actually best for the children. So then we're told well, is it better that that kid just is in foster care or an orphan or on the streets or something so there's always that that argument thrown back but you're saying well let's focus on the kids. Let's not push, let's not be anti gay or anti this or anti that let's focus on the kids and put them before us which is what every parent recognizes when they bring a kid into the world that they have to do that.

So, this concept of them before us flesh it out for me. How does this work out in everyday life. So the good news is that all of these different issues around marriage and family, a lot of times we think that they're separate issues right the issue of who goes on a child birth certificate or should do gay people have a right to adopt, or is surrogacy a great way to help somebody have a family, or, well, kids won't care if they're done, you know, created through sperm or egg donation because they are so wanted and have you noticed how much money their parents paid I mean come on those kids have to be really loved. And you know kids love, you know, growing up in a divorce household because two Christmases I mean, like all of these different issues. At the core, all of them have to do with whether we honor or disregard the rights of children. And so what we've tried to do in the book is give people a template that they can lay over the top of any question that arises about marriage and family and come up with the proper personal conclusions and policy decisions. And so we take a look at all these different issues through the lens of children's right to be known and loved by their mother and father, and we build a great statistical case I mean there's 30 pages of footnotes of stories and studies, but the other thing that we do what you just said is so true. Conservatives and pro family people have always had the best research, we've always had the best data, we've always had common sense.

We've even had the five major religions of the world on our side, but we have continued to lose cultural battles, because the other side tells a better story, because they humanize their arguments, and we have not been able to do that. Why? Because the stories on our side are very expensive to tell.

Do you know what it costs? A girl who grew up with two moms to come out of the closet and say, I support traditional marriage, because I desperately longed for a father every day of my life. And that kind of story is going to ingratiate her to her family and the people that she loves.

Do you think that a child who's conceived to a single mom by choice, who says, Yeah, my mom dropped a couple thousand dollars to create me, but how am I supposed to look her in the eye and tell her that her love isn't enough for me. Those stories are hard to find because they're expensive to tell. But that is what we have to do. We have to tell these stories because the stories are what changes hearts and minds.

And then we follow up with the most hard hitting data and studies that you're going to find anywhere. And so this truly is on any issue that's coming down the pipe, because there are tons of assaults that are continuing on the family on a state level and on a country level. This is how we have to tackle all those questions from the perspective of the child using their very own stories. And look, we have United Nations and different movements and the International Children's Movement, and people are consciously thinking about what's best for children.

But normally things are not processed properly in our thinking. There was even a survey that got a lot of attention a few years back about how kids were thriving with gay parents and even doing better than with straight parents. Well, the survey was based on the parents perceptions.

That's how it was done. How do you think your kids are doing? So even data that people are looking at can be so, so misleading. And Katie, since you're familiar with a mom and dad environment and then a mom and mom environment, and you've got personal experience that touches on this or at least can give insight.

I mean, what's the difference? Aren't two caring parents enough? Yeah, so we spend, I'll give you a quick tour, quick overview of the book. Chapter one is just why children have a right to their mother and father, how we know it's true and why it matters. Chapter two is why biology matters in parenthood, why we have so much data on how biological parents interact differently with children than unrelated adults in the home. Chapter three, we talk about gender matters and why moms and dads offer distinct and complementary benefits to child rearing. Chapter four, it's all about why marriage is a social justice issue for children, because it's the only adult relationship that unites the two people to whom children have a natural right. Chapter five, we talk about no-fault divorce and the havoc it wreaks on kids' lives for life. Chapter six, we talk about same-sex parenting, and we devote the first half of the chapter to debunking this no-difference myth that children created and raised by same-sex parents, they are no different. Chapter seven, we like destroy all of those studies on the other side that say there's no difference.

I mean, we dive deep into the methodological flaws that allowed, quote-unquote, researchers to come up with those conclusions. Chapter seven is all about sperm and egg donation, where we've got, I don't know, 25 or 30 stories of kids talking about laying awake at night, fantasizing about who their real mother or father are. Chapter eight, we talk about surrogacy and how no matter how you use surrogacy, it is never a child-friendly process. Chapter nine, we talk about adoption and why adoption is child-centric and supports the rights of children when it's properly understood, and why reproductive technologies violate the rights of children. You know, that adoption is an institution centered around the needs of a child. Reproductive technologies are a marketplace centered around the desires and the checkbooks of adults. And then chapter 10 is all about how do we win this battle? What does this children's rights movement look like?

How do we effectively advocate for children everywhere we go? How does our perspective need to change? All right, we're going to answer some of that last question when we come back.

How do we do this? The book, it's an amazing book. It's a book you really need to get into the hands of friends, educators, parents, them before us.

Katie Faust and Stacey Mann. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with Katie Faust, co-author of the important new book, Them Before Us.

Well, we need a global children's rights movement. Katie, just an aside, but it actually ties in with your relevant background. You speak Mandarin Chinese? I do. Yeah.

All right. How did you come to learn that? You know, I kind of took it on a whim in college because you only had to have three semesters of that language where you usually had to have four of another language.

And I loved it. I ended up being an Asian studies major and then getting a Fulbright scholarship to Taiwan afterwards. And then working at a Chinese adoption agency. So I had like, like 10 years of my life where, you know, Chinese was my jam. Wow.

Amazing. So the Chinese adoption agency and your book, how does this tie in? Well, that was one of my first insights into, wow, the rights of children matter and are being disregarded in pretty significant ways across the world. But it also tutored me in the real purpose of adoption. Adoption is not a means for adults to get kids. Adoption is a critical institution that satisfies the needs of children. And I share the story in the book of this time where I went to the founder and director of my organization and I said, man, I'm working so hard to get these adults approved.

I'm just having such a hard time running into so many roadblocks. And she said to me, Katie, those adults are not our client. They might pay us, but the child is our client. Not every adult who wants a kid should get one, but every child that needs a home should find one.

And it just blew my mind, right, that that is how we need to think about every marriage and family issue is begin with the kids and work your way out. All right. Let's let's do a few really quick snapshots again, friends, to get all the stories, the detail, the data in a very readable and persuasive way. Get the book then before us.

All right. Snapshot. So a girl that's raised by by two mommies. What is she missing on?

Well, she's missing a lot. You know, first of all, she's always missing one biological parent, at least. And biological parents, as we cover in detail in Chapter two, are the safest, most connected to, most protective of and most invested in children. Number two, she's always got a non biologically related adult in her home, which we know after studying step families does not improve outcomes for children. Number three, she is missing out on the maternal and paternal love that children that we've we know is developmentally optimal for children, but also kids crave it.

I mean, they long to be loved by a daddy. And we've got several stories in our Chapter six, actually, in a couple different chapters of what happens to a child's heart when they are denied the love that they are made for from their mother or father. And added to the top of that is that many of these kids have intentionally been denied a relationship with their mother and father. They're not there, you know, by accident or because their dad died. And then, you know, the mom got into a same sex relationship.

Many have meant much of the time. The adults that are raising the child decided that the father should be absent. And so that adds a really heavy psychological burden to the child because they have these natural human longings to be known and loved by both their mother and their father. But if they were to share that with the adults who are raising them, they're actually condemning the decisions of the people that they love. And so what it often means is these kids have to suffer in silence. All right, again, we're just getting snapshots.

There's so much more. And look, you may be in a situation where you're a single mom or a single dad or in a blended family. And the principles in this book will help you to recognize the great needs of the children and how to do your best before the Lord to to make up for lack. But what about kids that are raised as stepchildren? So there's divorce, blended family.

It's so common these days and so many divorces have no biblical merit whatsoever, but just common. What are the disadvantages in a setting like that for the child? So we make it very clear the research is not positive when it comes to divorce and remarriage. But we also make it clear that there are heroic step parents out there who are stepping in to fill the role of negligent biological parents. And we've include a couple stories of, you know, kids who said, look, this social parent or step parent really did feel a need in my life. But when you look at statistics and outcomes for kids, what you see is that a child's life generally does not improve when a stepdad joins the family.

Any two will not do. And that what often happens, let's say, after a parental separation and remarriage is a nonstop cycle of instability for children. And that the divorce is just step one of what's going to be lots of losses and transitions throughout that child's life.

Oftentimes they do not forge the same kind of close bond and connection with the nonbiologically related parent. Very often, unfortunately, the step parent or live-in boyfriend or girlfriend does not treat that child like their own child. And in the most unfortunate cases, you know, we know that an unrelated cohabiting man, statistically, is the most dangerous person in a child's life. And so I think all of us can think about step families that are really trying to make the best out of a difficult situation or heroic step parents who are standing in and filling that gap. But if we're going to be clear-eyed about family and what's going on, we have to acknowledge the reality that those blended families, step families, moms live-in boyfriend, dads live-in girlfriend, those are not situations that are beneficial to children generally.

Yeah. And, you know, when we look at so many of the issues that kids are dealing with today, the exposure to social media and the pressures that can come with that, the isolation of lives, the dangers of porn that just out the internet even for youngsters, the immersion in virtual reality video games, you know, it's all those other things. And then you add in the most fundamental that in so many cases, the family structure itself is unstable.

That's a lot of obstacles. It's no surprise that suicide is higher with young people for years now, that depression is higher. It only makes sense. And therefore, to do what we can for the children. And again, to me, that's the beauty and the wisdom of this book.

It's not attacking others. It's not criticizing others saying, what's best? What's best for the kids? Can we all agree then before us? Look, we know if there was some crisis and you're getting people out of a burning building, you're going to get the kids out first. We just understand. You're going to put them first. So give us a picture of what this global children's rights movement can look like.

Well, it's pretty incredible. And what you're saying is exactly right. I think one of the false shortcomings of some pro-family efforts over the past is they've only focused on one issue or maybe they've been a little selective. They'll get really outraged about, for example, same sex parenting, but they're kind of quiet when it comes to the nice heterosexual Christian couple that's using a sperm donor because they're really nice people, you know. And that does not bode well for developing a global strong movement.

And I will tell you that especially doesn't work for young people, for millennials and Gen Z who have been so marketed to, they can smell BS when they see it. They know hypocrisy in action. So if you say that you are pro-child, are you really pro-child? Are you pro-child in every area where it matters?

And so we are, you know, that's what we want. We're going to begin with the rights of children. And I love, I love that we have seen such progress against abortion by focusing on a child's right to life. And I'm so grateful for the hundreds of organizations that are fighting against abortion based on children's rights.

But nobody is doing this on this side of the womb. And that is what we need, right? We need to stand firmly on the rights of children and say we are going to defend those rights. No matter what adult group it offends. And so I've told people, give me enough time and I'll probably piss you off too. You know, that there's no exceptions in this children's rights movement.

Nobody gets a pass. It doesn't matter if you're single or married or gay or straight. At some point, almost all adults are going to have to prioritize children's rights before their own desires. You know, my husband's a pastor and we spend a lot of time doing marriage counseling for couples that are struggling. And these are challenges. I mean, my gosh, the kinds of things that married couples have to work through to keep their marriage together.

It's nothing to poo poo, right? These are difficult challenges. But we must insist that adults do the hard things so that children don't have to. So we're going to take that mentality and that mindset into this global movement. And we are going to insist that all adults conform to the rights of all children. And guess what? You can change the world with that kind of movement and that kind of message.

And it also means that you get this incredible coalition all through Chapter 10. We just spend, like I do, go on and on in Chapter 10 about our supporters who are Hindus and Muslims and gay men and lesbians and Jewish mothers and evangelical homeschoolers and atheists all talking about the importance of defending the fundamental rights of children. So you can build an incredible, diverse coalition of people who understand that we're not going to make any social progress until we can defend children's fundamental rights. And Katie, you're saying then we've just got a minute that even if someone is not a Bible believer in the sense that we are and holding to hate, this is scripture and we do this based on scripture, that you can make an argument just on the best interests of the children that can appeal to a wider group of people.

I'll put that differently. You must make an argument that is based on natural law, studies, and stories, not based on scripture. We have got to be the best advocates for children. And especially when it comes to policy, that means we never utter the words, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, ever again. Right?

Christians have got to do so much better. And we have to become experts. And this book helps you do it. Yeah, friends, it really does. I could have gone on with superlatives as I was going through it.

Katie Faust and Stacey Manning, them before us. Get a few copies of the book and then when you get it, enjoy it. Post a review wherever you got the book. Let folks know about it, that it's been a blessing. Katie, keep up the great work and may God use this on an international level. Thank you, Dr. Brown.

So good to chat with you again. Yep. Always. God bless you. Get into the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. You know, for the first 59 years of my life, I knew and understood that there are principles of health and well-being. And as I became a believer, I understood God made the body. I learned things about where you care for your body will have certain long term results, but I ate unhealthily until 59 and a half years old, where God graciously intervened and helped me to make a radical lifestyle change. And as a result of that, I've been thriving in ways that are just amazing, literally feeling I'm getting younger every year. And I don't understand the science behind it.

I talk to someone who does and they tell me how eating this has this effect and doing this has this effect. You think, wow, God made us amazingly well. When we do things his way, the fruit, the results, it's all amazing. So it's my joy to have with me on the air today, Dr. Mark Stengler. He was not only voted by a group of professionals doctor of the year. He was recently voted doctor of the decade in America. He is a brilliant, brilliant naturopathic doctor with familiarity, of course, with all traditional American Western medicine as well. A best selling author of quite a few books.

National radio show. And the one that I go to for medical advice as well is also a great apologist, defender of the faith. Every week is out sharing the gospel in a park. So he's a real evangelist and just a joy to have. He's got a brand new book, Healing the Prostate, the best holistic methods to treat the prostate and other common male related conditions. Mark, thanks so much for joining us on the air again today.

Hi, great to be back with you. So let me ask the big question. The way God made us is obviously extraordinary, meticulous. You keep learning more about the human body.

What about ways that he gave us to live that you understand as a naturopathic doctor that a lot of Western medicine kind of ignores? Right. I think, you know, we can break it down in two categories. We've got God's spiritual laws and we have his natural law.

And there's, you know, parameters within both. So without a doubt, it's, you know, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in medicine. Anyhow, when you break certain natural laws, the tendency to develop disease, acquire disease, is very real.

I mean, I don't think anyone disputes it anymore. In the last 25 years in terms of, let's say, nutritional medicine, tens and tens of thousands of studies have come out demonstrating the relationship between the foods we eat, how we handle stress, how our exercise programs are, how our sleep is, how our relationships are, has a dramatic influence on our risk of disease and our state of health. Right. So a traditional doctor in America obviously goes through a lot of training, a lot of hard work to get where they are. How much of that do they study nutrition or the things that you learned as a naturopathic doctor?

Yeah. So when I went to school, we learned both systems of medicine. We learned traditional Western medicine, lab tests, pharmaceutical drugs, minor surgery, and all those types of things, which, you know, I use in my practice. And then we also were educated on nutritional therapies and other holistic type therapies. So unfortunately, still to this day, the average medical school in America incorporates little to no training in nutrition. I mean, they get some very basic essentials, but the training is very, very limited. There are some schools now across the country which are, you know, having limited amount of training in terms of nutrition. Like in my clinic here, I have a medical doctor who works in emergency medicine for years, and she'll tell you she basically had little to no training in nutritional medicine. And she's had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on her own time and money, of course, to learn from experts at medical seminars how to incorporate nutritional therapies into her practice.

And that's what she has done. All right. So as you've looked at the human body and the way God's put it together, is this something that can just be explained through natural evolutionary processes?

Absolutely not. I don't think anyone who has a basic understanding of the complexity of the human body, whether you go down to the cell. We have anywhere between 60 to 100 trillion cells in our body working in harmony, synchronicity together, or else disease will occur. And within each cell, we have six feet of DNA information, the blueprint of how our body should operate, how we make proteins, how we make organs, replace cells, and so forth. We have what are called molecular machines. If you went on to Google and you typed in molecular machines biology, you'll see it's an accepted term in medicine biology that we have molecular machines that run our cells, very intricately designed cells. We use millions of ATP molecules every second just to power our cells. So when you take that and then you go into the tissues, into the organ systems, the intercommunication amongst them all, how our body utilizes and produces energy, it's basically impossible to come up with any type of theory or hypothesis this could arise from randomness. Because in our world, never do you see complex design and function arise out of randomness.

Never. And so it's even more true for our body. That's why I'm a big believer in Romans chapter 1. We're essentially in God's creation, which includes what we see in nature, what we see in biology. It demonstrates that God exists at one level, and I'm a big believer in Romans chapter 1. So why would you think—and we'll get into the specific content of your new book, Healing the Prostate, in a moment— why would you think that there's so many biologists that are professing atheists? It seems that among medically trained people or people with degrees in these areas that biologists are some of the highest in terms of professing atheism. I could never imagine it was by studying the body that they became convinced there was no God. It seemed to be quite the contrary.

Why do you think that's such a stronghold still? Yeah, I think basically if you look at the history, I think over the past 50, 60 years, I think our higher learning institutions have been hijacked, really, by atheistic type of ideologies, socialistic type of ideologies. I think at some level, obviously, it's a spiritual battle. Again, there's no one who has a training in biology or medicine, for example, could explain naturally how these processes could have come out through randomness. Actually, it's even worse than randomness. I mean, according to Darwinian evolution, the generation of information to build higher life forms will come out of random mutations, which is a fancy way of saying putting coding mistakes into the gene pool.

I mean, how absurd is that? Ask any computer programmer if you start putting random mistakes into a computer program. It's going to lead to destruction and breakdown of the computer programming. We know that DNA is the most sophisticated software ever discovered amongst men.

It makes any super computer look like a joke. So no one would ever think rationally you can put mistakes into a computer program and build a higher order type of complexity, whether it be in computers or whether it be in a biological system. So this is why really on a certain level, Darwinian evolution is crashing. You are seeing people pulling away from it because as we understand the world of biology and how we analyze systems of biology, people are starting to admit it's not tenable anymore.

It's a system that cannot work. But at the root of it, there's always a spiritual thing at the beginning. Any time you can devalue humans, yeah.

Yeah, right. So that ends up being a result of this, the devaluing of humans because we're not seeing this uniquely created in God's image. And then, you know that I have very little scientific background and I know the right questions to ask.

But a lot of people like you for the answers. But isn't there a major problem with the evolutionary process that in order for a certain species to exist, it would have had to be developed to a certain point. But then evolution basically doesn't tell you how it existed before it got to that point. It should have been wiped out along the way. So aren't there all types of gaps and links, not just a missing link between apes and humans, but all kinds of missing links just in the development of the human body or the eye or certain species that just bankrupt the whole argument right there?

Well, absolutely. Let's take the cell. I mean, the cell is irreducibly complex. So you have several different systems within a cell.

And if one system isn't there or not working, I mean, the cell can't function. So if you start with this premise, which I know, but if someone believes, you know, somehow we originally got some ancient microbe of some kind, some ancient bacteria, of course, there's no evidence for, you'd have to explain where the parts came from, where the, how the genes will be put together randomly to carry out the processes. Because even a simple bacteria isn't simple. It has, it has molecular machines that run it.

It has a DNA code. And so, no, it's just not something that's possible. Now, to take a simpler life organism, let's say like a bacteria, for example, virus, whatever, and try and form higher complex life forms from it. I mean, it's never been observable in human history because it can't happen. It's just something that scientifically can't happen.

Where's the information going to come from to build those molecular machines? I mean, in terms of the evolutionary theory, you go from a simpler organism, over time, small changes into more complex life forms. But there's no known mechanism as to how that can happen because their hypothesis, I don't even like the word theory, their hypothesis is basically by random mistakes in the coding program, in the genes, in the DNA, somehow by these flukey mistakes, you're going to create a more higher complex life form. And, of course, it's absurd. It's not, it's not rational.

So it does not make sense. And then, like you said, where's the evidence? I mean, science is based on evidence, rational evidence. We don't see missing links in the fossil record.

We don't see that at all. Matter of fact, when we look at the Cambrian explosion from the earliest geostrata of the Earth, what do we see? We see instantaneous mature life forms. You don't see the transition from simpler to more complex life forms.

You see instantaneous, mature life forms. So, you know, and Michael, even before that, remember, Darwin's evolution does not explain the origin of life. They actually try and bypass that step.

They try and go thousands of steps beyond that. But they don't address the origin of life because their system can't make it work. They still believe, a lot of them, that life somehow came from non-life. So while they deny the supernatural, they actually believe in the supernatural because they believe in the non-scientific principle of abiogenesis, that somehow life came from non-life without a positive agent.

So they actually are quite believers in the miraculous. Yeah, I remember one time I was flying back from somewhere on the plane with a fellow who's a law professor at New York University. And we began talking. I said, oh, I got my Ph.D. from NYU in Semitic languages.

My dad was a senior lawyer in the New York Supreme Court. So, you know, we're chatting back and forth and talking about my faith. And he made this statement. He said, I'm a devout atheist. But he was very forceful. I said, you know, I like the word devout because it takes a whole lot more faith to believe what you believe than to believe what I believe. And, you know, I mean, he took it well.

But yeah, what you're saying is there are these massive leaps, whereas everything we posit in terms of an intelligent God creating brings us to where we are. All right. We come back. Let's focus in on what the prostate actually is and why every man should know about it. And why this new book, Healing the Prostate, might really be the difference between health and sickness or even life and death.

We'll be right back. Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, friends, to the line of fire. It's my joy to be speaking today with personal friend and the man to my go for medical advice, Dr. Mark Stengler, best selling author, nationally known physician. His new book, Healing the Prostate, the best holistic methods to treat the prostate and other common male related conditions. So, Mark, I would imagine that your average man has heard of the prostate. But I wonder if your average man knows why it's important to know about the prostate. We hear about men that are older getting prostate cancer. But you start the book by saying everybody, every man needs to know about this and take action. So why is this so important? What kind of action do men need to take?

Right. Well, the prostate is such a, in some ways, it's a very interesting design I talk about in the book. It's definitely a design gland like the rest of the body.

It works in conjunction with other very specific glands and organs in the body, part of the male reproductive system. But unfortunately, in America and other industrialized nations around the world where men aren't eating properly, they have increased body weight and body mass index. They're exposed to certain chemicals in the environment called xenoestrogens.

We have plastics and pesticides and cosmetics. The average man develops prostate problems in America. So if you live to age 90, you're 90% likely to have an enlarged prostate. One in nine men get prostate cancer in America.

It's the second most common next to skin cancer. And then prostatitis, which is inflammation and or infection of the prostate, is the most common urinary tract problem for men under the age of 50. So you can see from about age 45 and up, men have a lot of problems with the prostate. And for the most common type, BPH, known as benign prostatic hyperplasia, that's a way of saying enlargement of the prostate, men develop urination problems. So frequency during the day, frequency during the night, a weak stream, dribbling, things of this nature which, you know, become problematic. Especially if your sleep's being disrupted or you can't carry out your daily activities during the day because you've got to go in the restroom all the time.

So this is a phenomenon which is just a major problem in America. And so we have shown through vast amounts of studies that if you change your diet, if you lose weight, if you can detoxify properly, avoid certain chemicals, you can greatly reduce your risk of these conditions as well as you can improve your symptoms associated with these prostate problems. So let's say your average male is 55 years old, eating a typical American diet, realizing he's starting to have some problems or something comes up in an annual physical.

Normally, what would traditional medicine prescribe to that person? Well, normally in medicine, they wouldn't prescribe anything unless it's quite bothersome for the patient. So if the patient's very much bothered with urination issues, they'll give him medications, they'll give him medications which relax the bladder wall, which relax the prostate so the urine can flow out more effectively. You know, our prostate is beneath the bladder and then the urinary tube that drains the bladder, urethra, basically comes in between us. Your prostate enlargement enlarges it, pinches in on that draining tube, that urethra, so men get these urinary issues. So doctors will prescribe medications to help with urination, but they can have side effects. People have heard of medications like Tamsulosin or Flomax, so some men from that, they feel faint.

People get too rapid of a drop in blood pressure, dizziness, things of that nature. Then there's other medications which work more on the prostate tissue itself. These kind of have hormone blocking effects. And so our prostate gland is very sensitive to two hormones, estrogen and a metabolite of testosterone called DHT. And as men get older, their estrogen levels and DHT levels tend to increase, especially if they're overweight and not eating well.

They have insulin resistance, blood sugar levels are up, prediabetic or diabetic, things like that. And so they stimulate the gland to the prostate cells to increase in size and numbers. So you get prostate enlargement or you can get prostate cancer. Anyways, there are medications which can block those hormones, but they can have all sorts of side effects too. They can cause things like breast enlargement, fatigue, decreased libido, headaches, sexual dysfunction, things like that. So these are offered to men, but what I tell patients is, look, unless you're in the severe category, if you're in the mild to moderate like most men, normally we can take care of this, diet changes, weight loss, and in very precise nutritional supplements which have been studied for this problem quite in depth. Numerous, numerous studies which work well to accomplish the same thing, symptom relief, reduced hormonal stimulation of the gland. And friends, you might say, well, wow, it'd be amazing if I could get to Dr. Stengler.

I don't live in California and maybe have to go in multiple times and so on. Well, here's the good news. He wrote a book. That's why he put this in book form, Healing the Prostate, the best holistic methods to treat the prostate and other common male related conditions. Now, Mark, a lot of people hear the word holistic and they think New Age crystals or chanting or something like that. But holistic is just basically following God's design for the body, isn't it?

I think so. I mean, holistic, I think, is a balanced approach. When we use the term holistic or integrative, it's not necessarily taking out one portion of medicine. Like I said, I came to our clinic and my wife's a doctor, practice here, and we've got two other ones. We use all sorts of different treatments depending on what's going on with the patient. I mean, I saw a patient this morning and a couple weeks ago did some lab work on her and she had a raging urinary tract infection.

She was a senior. So I put her on an antibiotic and we're retesting her to make sure it's gone. But on the other hand, in America, our health has suffered because we have focused too much on drugs and surgery, not addressing the diet, the lifestyle, using natural products, which, by the way, in most of the other parts of the world are very mainstream. China, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, all these places. I mean, your typical medical doctor uses these approaches. So, you know, it is true. There are some practitioners in holistic medicine which, yes, I would say they get into new age, non-scientific types of practices. But, you know, integrative holistic medicine actually has taken off in America in the last 15 years. I mean, you have tens of thousands of medical doctors who used to do regular practices now practicing holistic medicine. So it's a small percent of people, I think, that are into some weird stuff.

Obviously, as a Christian, I reject anything that's anti-biblical, whether it be a world view or certain practices. You know, I remember last year when I was in your clinic to get blood work for my annual physical, and I was talking to one of your colleagues, one of your attending physicians there, and he was just talking about diet and things, and he said, you know, there's God's food, there's man's food. He was just talking about the way God made it versus the way we process it. And here, you have an integrative clinic that's actually, you know, in the name of it. And in your book, Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, when we talked about that, you said, yeah, if someone's getting chemotherapy, there are things that you'll do to keep them healthier through it. So you're not rejecting Western medicine. It's just, it's often so limited, and then we don't tie it in with biblical principles. So as a Christian and as a doctor, it gives you that advantage to say, hey, God made us incredibly well, very meticulously and amazingly.

And then he put things in the earth for us to eat. And you know my story, you know, as you've done my blood work, it's just mind boggling to see the change and the health and the thriving. So it's got to be very satisfying to see people not dependent for life on medicine that may have all kinds of negative side effects, but just to gain their health back by following what are ultimately biblical principles that are now confirmed by science. Yeah, I think that's a good summary. I mean, basically, doctors like myself, we just have a lot more tools than the average doctor.

That's really what it comes down to. We have many more tools to use. And look, when you accept the fact, and it is a fact, that the body has a designed healing system within parameters, what the advantage of holistic medicine is, is we work with the healing systems of the body.

And no one can deny it. The body has natural healing systems. I mean, every day our body is fighting off microbes and healing up damages to our muscles and our skin and all these types of things.

And so it can do that within designed parameters. And so what holistic medicine offers is the ability to work with the healing systems of the body. Now sometimes we have to use suppressive treatments. But even though that senior I recently gave antibiotics to, I saw this morning, I mean, think about it. People don't realize, yes, I gave her a powerful antibiotic to kill bacteria in her urinary system. However, we know that that in itself won't do the job. It'll get the bacteria levels down, but that allows the immune system then to get on top of the infection and eradicate it.

It's in itself not curative. Yeah. You know, I heard from an old friend known, oh, this is my college days, basically. And he wanted me to know that he had stage four kidney cancer, just a shock to hear it. But he had been on on medication for depression and other issues for years. And he said, yeah, one of them was real bad and it basically destroyed his kidneys.

So there are so many times the downside and then there are better ways to do things. Again, friends, the book Healing the Prostate, Dr. Mark Stengler, who should read this book? Yeah, well, I think any man, any men that are over 45 years older and their spouses, because, you know, the wives normally have to deal, you know, their spouses having all these issues. And we go beyond the prostate. We go into things like testosterone deficiency and other hormonal balances, which are so common in men, just for example, 40 percent of men over the ages of 45 in America have testosterone deficiency. So we talk about why that is, what you do naturally about it, how you can be tested, things of that nature. Yeah, I remember a colleague was fighting depression for months and months, was on himself, didn't know what the issue was, found out he had he had low testosterone and it affected his whole emotional outlook, made it difficult for him to minister.

So this is this is everyday life. So the book Healing the Prostate, got a copy here in my hand, just holding up for everyone that's watching. Dr. Mark Stengler, check out his other books. And is there a website folks can go to to get some of the nutritional products you have and find out more, get your newsletter, things like that? Yeah, sure. My clinic website is Mark Stengler dot com.

And in terms of my radio show where they can listen to the podcast radio shows that come out every week, it's America's natural doctor dot com. Got it. All right. So there you go. Check that out.

Get a copy of the book. Get it for folks you love. All right. So men over 45 and spouses of those men or kids that care. Buy it for your dad.

Buy it for your mom to read as well. Healing the Prostate. Dr. Mark Stengler. Hey, thanks for joining us. Look forward to seeing you face to face. Thank you. Game to the world.