Toure Roberts - Breathing Better

Hey family, this is Pastor Torrey Roberts here, and I’m excited about where we’re going today. I want to begin by saying that I’ve truly been blessed to be exposed to a number of incredible things, incredible people, etc. I believe that my job as a leader, as your pastor, as your spiritual leader—however you see me—is to bring you into experiences that are helpful and meaningful. I’m thinking about a couple of things. One is the words of Jesus, who said, «I came that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly.» There’s even a passage in Third John where the writer states, «Above all, I wish that you would prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.» This is interesting because the obvious is that we are to prosper in our souls; we are souls—we’re living souls—so that’s automatic. However, the writer makes a distinction and says, in addition to that, «I desire for you to prosper in other areas, even in your health.» I’ve been very fortunate to meet someone whom I want to introduce to you today, and we’re going to have a powerful, enlightening conversation that could literally save your life. I’m excited to introduce someone I’ve really grown to admire: Dr. David Edwards.

«Thank you so much, Torrey. I’m really delighted to be here, and I truly feel fortunate to have met you. I’m looking forward to the conversation; it’s going to be fantastic. Dr. David is a scientist and a researcher. He has been honored by Time magazine with an Innovator of the Year award or a similar type of award, along with an Invention of the Year award—it might be that; it’s amazing, let’s just put it that way. Absolutely incredible. What he is studying and what he is truly committing his life’s work to right now is absolutely fascinating. Did you know that breathing—the act of breathing—all of us talk about breathing, a breath of fresh air, and all those sorts of things? To breathe is life. But did you know that your breath, your breathing, could actually be working against you right now? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to discuss bad air and the effects of bad air. So listen, tune in; you don’t want to miss this conversation. It’s going to be life-changing.

I guess we can begin by me just telling you how truly taken aback I was when I learned that every time I take a breath, because of the environment and because of evolution and all other factors—which David will discuss far more eloquently than I can—years are literally being taken off my life because of the air I’m breathing and how my body is responding to it. That’s what I want to talk to you about. I want to discuss not only the problem but also a solution that I believe will help us breathe better. David, can you talk to us about your research and your work? You know, one of the things I admire about you is that you’re committed to solving problems. You are obviously extremely educated; you teach at Harvard and other places. What problem are you committed to solving?

„Thank you, Torrey. Well, I should say that my background is applied math, and I published a paper years ago in Science that showed how we can inhale insulin, and that became a company. It really changed my life; it changed my life because it was the first time where an idea we published—a mathematical idea—was translated into a company. The company ultimately produced inhaled L-dopa for Parkinson’s treatment, and it was approved by the FDA just a few years ago. Seeing that an idea could come from my mind and have impact really moved me, and I became committed to the idea that every breath we take, as you’ve said so eloquently, gives us life; however, because of what’s happening around us, the opposite is occurring. So how could we make every breath we take improve people’s lives as it’s supposed to? That’s really what I’ve dedicated my life to. It began, in many ways, with the story I just mentioned, but it really accelerated with the anthrax scare that happened in the early 2000s. Because of what I’d done with insulin, I was invited to Washington, D.C., for the meeting that led to Homeland Security and discussions about how to protect people from pathogens in the air, the nature of which we do not know. That’s a hard question to answer, and it led to the realization we published in the early 2000s that if you put salt water in the airways, you actually eliminate those little droplets we all talk about—these respiratory droplets. That was meaningful in terms of our thinking about SARS during the very first epidemic, but it has led to 20 years of research that accelerated with the pandemic, and it has resulted in the conversation we’re about to have right now. So let me quickly say that there’s nothing more important to everyone on the planet today than that we hydrate the upper airways—from the tip of our nose to the end of our windpipe—and you hydrate by putting water in your body, but also by incorporating salt. It turns out that every living organism has…“