Too Much on Your Mind?

The Bible frequently warns against anxiety. Modern science agrees that anxiety produces all sorts of negative changes in the body. A study on rats some years ago suggests that the damage done by anxiety begins practically at the onset of anxiety.

In the study, scientists used electrodes on some of the rats to simulate what happens in the brain when learning takes place. Then they put all the animals through a learning exercise. The rats were to learn to find and swim to a submerged platform in a water tank. Scientists found that those rats whose learning centers were overstimulated did much more poorly at learning than those who had not been overstimulated.

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Learning normally takes place as new experiences strengthen connections between nerve cells. However, scientists concluded that overstimulation prevents those connections from being strengthened. In practical terms, this means that there is a limit to how quickly we can absorb new information. In other words, the student who stays up all night cramming for final exams will end up less able to learn than the non anxious student who sleeps peacefully the night before finals.

So, if you have ever had times when you thought that your brain just couldn’t absorb more information, you were probably right. So now we have yet another reason why God, in His Word, urges us not to be anxious, but to cast all our cares on Him. After all, if He sent His only Son to rescue you from sin, death and the devil, will He not also carry you through whatever makes you anxious?