Source: Ron Csillag (Toronto). Globe and Mail April 2, 2002.
God is Good Medicine
What to live a longer, healthier life? The answer may be in your place of worship, researchers are finding.
Health club membership: check, Ginkgo and kelp caplets: check. Cigarettes, down; veggies, up: check. Religion: che…. What?
Yes, health nuts and slugabeds alike, it’s time to acknowledge something you may have heard in Sunday school or while perched on Grandma’s knee: Like spinach, God is good for you.
Medical science, especially in the West, may still turn up its nose at the mix of health and spirituality, but it’s slowing coming around. At least 80 to 125 medical schools in the United States offer courses in religion and medicine. In Canada. The Ontario Multifaith Council on Spiritual and Religious Care is calling for papers for a big conference in October at the University of Toronto on Spirituality and Health Care.
The research- scads of it- continues to confirm more or less the same thing: People who follow a religious / spiritual path are more likely to enjoy greater longevity and superior overall health than those who do not. And prayer, meditation and other mind-body approaches, whether from the Eastern or Western religious models, appear to be beneficial to the healing process.
That’s not to suggest that atheists, agnostics and secular humanists will keel over tomorrow from heart attacks, or that he faithful are immune from alcoholism or obesity. While not all of us do such a great job of flowing the dictates of our religions and may enjoy good health anyway, the link between spiritual engagement and healthy behaviour is, finally, as close to undeniable as it has ever been.
Even Canada’s bets known atheist isn’t’ completely dismissive of the findings. Dr. Robert Buckman, president of the Humanist Association of Canada, says simple membership in a religious group—indeed any group—can act as a cohesive force. In his book, Can We Be Good Without God?, Dr. Buckman describes this type of conformity as ‘herd glue”, one that comes with its own rewards. A sense of belonging to a group can come from applauding at the theatre along with everyone else, or joining the army.
“Having a genuine communal life is probably good for you”, Dr. Buckman said in a an interview, “whether it’s stamp collecting, train spotting or a religion”. However, “the idea that the [benefit] comes from an external god remains unproven”.
In the scientific community, some doggedly insists that the evidence is of the angels on the head of a pin variety; that religion and science don’t mix and that attempts to yoke them constitute dangerous quackery, an attempt to steer medicine back to the Dark Ages. This is where the lines may be blurred between two different but overlapping areas: the physiological benefits of a religion or religious sub-group, which may be measured, and the less quantifiable mind-body-spirit connection.
Even in an age in which our temporal lobes can be electrically stimulated to mimic sensations of the divine, including visions of angels, other scientist speak excitedly of a whole new field; the epidemiology of religion, or theosomatic medicine. Whether placebo or not, it has opened a floodgate or findings.
At last count, more than 1200 studies and 400 reviews, from Canada, Europe and the United States show that:
- Those who regularly attend a house of worship have demonstrated lower rates of illness and death than do infrequent or non-attenders
- For each of the three leading causes of death in North America- heart disease, cancer and hypertension- people who report a religious affiliation have lower rates of illness and higher rates of recovery
- Older adults who participate in private and congregational worship exhibit fewer symptoms, less disability and lower rates of depression, chronic anxiety, and dementia than those who do not
- Actively religious people live longer, on average, that the non-religious (up to seven years longer, say some studies). This holds true even when controlling for the fact that religious people tend to avoid health risks such as smoking, drinking and promiscuity
- Among African-Americans, religious participation has been found to be the single strongest determinant of psychological well being- more so than physical health or financial status.
- Meditation and prayer have been found to improve patients overall well-being. As your doctor might say, they can’t hurt.
The newest study, in this week’s International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, found that the people who didn’t attend services regularly were twice as likely to die of non-cancerous digestive diseases. 21 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, including heart and stroke, and 66 percent more likely to die to respiratory diseases, other than cancer.
In all, the research points in one direction, at least as far as the psychological benefits of religious go; High, even moderate, levels of religious faith and/or spiritual awareness are associated with greater resilience to stress, lower levels of anxiety, better coping skills, a greater sense of belonging and generally, a sunnier, more serene, take on life.
All this is admittedly amorphous. After all, a doctor can’t strap a cuff to your arm to measure your piety, and then prescribe a week in the church choir.
And then there’s the dizzying array of religions out there. Which one should you choose to guarantee the best health?
While on none’s suggesting that one religion is better than another (or that any religion openly encourages sloth, promiscuity or drug abuse), the findings, both old and new but only recently consolidated, are generating immense interest because they rest on a powerful indicator: hard data- not necessarily on theological minutiae or the immeasurable effects of prayer, but on key health issues as they appear within certain religious groups.
There are two groundbreaking books on the subject: The Handbook of Religion and Heath, a 712 page bruiser that sifts through the studies linking religious practice with health, and the far more accessible God, Faith and Healthy by Dr. Jeff Levin, North American’s premier chronicler of the new field and among those experts to note that followers of certain faith groups do better than others when it comes to disease and death.
Dr. Levin’s argument isn’t hard to follow: Members of religious groups that place restrictions on certain behaviour, or offer guidelines or are supportive of a healthy lifestyle, are at decreased risk of heart attack, hypertension and cancer, and seem to live longer and be in better health. Put another, perhaps mundane way, they best health results are seen in religions that make the strictest behavioural demands of its adherents.
Those demands typically involve both prescribed and proscribed actions relating to health, such as diet, physical activity, meditation, sexual activity, hygiene and tobacco, alcohol and drug use. They can be found in nearly every religion.
Moderation, yes: but it seems like outright abstemiousness really pays off.
Among the protected populations throughout the studies, Dr. Levin sees the same religious groups popping up: Amish, Buddhist monks, Roman Catholic nuns, Hindus, Hutterites, Jains, Jews, Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, Zoroastrians, Protestant clergy and Trappist monks.
Not surprisingly, these groups most explicitly promote—and abjure—certain behaviour. Mormons, for example, abstain from smoking, drinking alcohol and consuming caffeine. Officially, Seventh-day Adventists don’t smoke, drink alcohol and follow a strict lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet. The Amish and Hutterites discourage tobacco use and have very low levels of pre- and extramarital sex. Jains are strict vegetarians and are urged to practice monogamy.
As for the old East-West split, who knows? The Judeo-Christian-Islamic paradigm testifies to the existence of a God who expects certain standards of behaviour (but who can heal and cure if He chooses to intercede), whereas in the Hindu-Jain model, the concept of salvation lies in the belief that all human souls are subject to a cycle of reincarnation (samsara), until such a state of personal purity is attained, presumably through clean living, that the soul transcends the need for further incarnations.
Either way, belief seems to be the key: a belief beyond paying simple lip service to the tenets of religion. None of these benefits, after all, are likely to “take” if one just does through the notions, say, attending a house of worship now and then. Affirming a particular religious identity ought to be reasons of the soul, not epidemiology.
On the other hand, quitting smoking, and moderating one’s drinking, diet and sexual practices have more to do with will than spirit. As Dr. Levin puts it, you hardly need to change your religion to get healthy.
“When we say that smoking is a risk factor for cancer, it doesn’t mean that only smokers get cancer, or that if youdon’t smoke you won’t get sick,” he said in a phone interview from his Kansas home. “What we’re saying here is that spirituality and faith simply merits a place at the table with all the other biological and behavioural and environmental factors. One can certainly not be religious and be in terrific health. But all things being equal, there does seem some epidemiological advantage to being on a faith path.”
Questions
- What reasons does the author give to state that religion is good for a person’s health? List THREE.
- What evidence does the author give to support the reasons / arguments? List THREE.
- Describe / outline Dr. Levin’s main argument regarding religion and health.
- According to the author, what religion guarantees the best health? Explain.
- Do you agree with the article? Give three reasons why or why not.