Friday, June 04, 2004
Power of prayer
Scientists are increasingly taking note of the connection between faith and health. Private and public money is beginning to flow in, with one branch of the National Institutes of Health more than doubling such research funding in the past five years. Researchers are studying a broad range of issues, trying to determine if faith can lengthen lives, strengthen the immune system, lower stress and blood pressure as well as decrease the odds of heart disease and dying from cancer.
"It gives people a sense of peace and optimism," said Gail H. Ironson, a University of Miami professor of psychology and psychiatry. "It gives them hope. They have less anxiety and depression."
UM has two nationally recognized faculty members in the forefront of spirituality-health research. Ironson and Michael E. McCullough, a psychologist, recently were named to a $3.5 million research team to study how the spirituality transforms, particularly how it appears to keep many people healthier, even during life-threatening illnesses.
Different angles
Ironson is studying HIV patients to see whether their spirituality helps slow the progression of the virus.
McCullough is looking at the spiritual transformation across the life span of 1,200 people -- and how that affects their long-term health. For example, he plans to look at whether those who go back to religious services in midlife live longer than those who don't.
Previous research has shown that "the religious tend to reap benefits: They live longer and better," McCullough said.
A study led by Robert Hummer of the University of Texas at Austin looked at 21,204 adults selected randomly across the country from 1987 to 1995. Those who attended a religious service at least once a week lived on average almost seven years longer than those who didn't.
The study found an average life span of 75.3 years for non-attenders compared with 81.9 for those who attend services once a week and 82.9 for people who went more than once a week.
Ironson found people didn't have to go to formal services to get a health benefit.
For the past seven years, Ironson has studied how Kaplan and more than 500 other HIV/AIDS patients -- most from Miami-Dade and Broward -- cope with their illness. Her studies involve about 70 percent men and 30 percent women, some of whom have been HIV-positive since the early 1980s.
She found that having faith in God or a sense of peace lowers the stress hormone cortisol and has been linked to the long-term survival of HIV/AIDS patients, she said.
For decades, doctors and scientists shied away from considering that spirituality might have an impact on health. Indeed, many doctors say Americans shouldn't equate prayer with Prozac.
Nevertheless, the spiritual-health hypothesis has piqued the interest of many in the scientific community, and research money has begun to flow.
Over the past five years, the federal National Institutes of Health's Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine has more than doubled the dollars spent on research on religion, spirituality and meditation -- from $1.4 million in fiscal 1999 to $3.2 million in fiscal 2003, said Dr. Stephen E. Straus, director of the center.
More than a fourth of all research dollars for mind-body research goes into studying how religion, spirituality and meditation affect people.
"We've begun to understand how the mind interacts with the body," Straus said. "The mind does send chemical messages to the body."
Studies have shown that positive attitudes strengthen the immune system, which helps fight off infection. Meanwhile, depression and stress lower resistance, Straus said.
Harold G. Koenig, a Duke University professor and psychiatrist who in 1998 started the country's first Center for Religion/Spirituality and Health, said his center has studied a wide range of topics, finding that faith lowers blood pressure, helps the hospitalized cope with their illness and is linked to longevity.
"Faith and medicine work beautifully together," he said.
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