TruthBook Religious News Blog

'Opiate of the masses?'

Charles Lewis, National Post
Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Religion may or may not be the opiate of the masses but a new study says it may keep believers from losing their cool when things go wrong.

"These results suggest that religious conviction provides a framework for understanding and acting within one's environment, thereby acting as a buffer against anxiety and minimizing the experience of error," said the study published in the journal Psychological Science.

Led by Michael Inzlicht, a University of Toronto psychology professor, researchers measured activity in the part of the brain - the anterior cingulate cortex - that is important for self control and acts as a warning signal that a mistake is being made.

"It acts as a cortical alarm bell," said Prof. Inzlicht. "And the finding is that the more people believe in God the less the cortical alarm bell rings."

Those with the deepest religious belief were more likely to let mistakes roll off their backs, while those who tend toward atheism were more likely to suffer stress and anxiety after committing an error.

To test stress levels, he and his co-researchers used a "Stroop task." In it, subjects have a series words flashed in front of them. But they are told not to read the word but the colour of the word. For example, the word might be "blue" but if coloured red, the correct answer is red.

"It's difficult to do when the word and colour mismatch," said Prof. Inzlicht.

He said it is possible that a lack of anxiety may not be a good thing, as it may cause a more lackadaisical attitude.

"Anxiety can be beneficial," he said. "It gets you motivated, activated to perform at your best level. But if you're too anxious, your performance is going suffer. You're going to over analyze and think too much. What may be happening is that people with religion have a more optimal level of anxiety."

The study was not meant to argue for or against the existence of a higher being, Prof. Inzlicht said.

"Whether God is real or not is irrelevant to this study."

He called the study "statistically significant," meaning that the results should be repeatable in similar experiments and could act as a predictor to how people might react to real-world stress situations, such as today's crumbling stock markets. Prof. Inzlicht also said that no atheist in the study showed low anxiety and no religious person showed high anxiety.

Two separate studies were done and both showed the same results.

He said initially they were simply trying to understand what factors would activate these brain waves, not investigate religious belief.

At first, they asked people to describe themselves as being liberal or conservative. Then they asked others to describe their level of self-esteem. Neither of those parameters helped predict brain wave activity. It was only when they started asking about a belief in God and religiosity that a pattern developed.

Labels: anxiety, Charles Lewis, Psychological Science, religion

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

More students 'searching for a spiritual meaning'

by Allison Stice

Page one of two: Please click on "xternal link" at the bottom of this page for complete article

College students at this university and around the country are increasingly finding meditation a part of their overall health care, as health care providers learn more about the health and cognitive benefits of meditating.

Student groups like the Meditation Club and classes through the University Health Center and Campus Recreation Services are proliferating and promoting meditation as a means to combat anxiety, depression and even drug abuse, while meditation techniques are an integral part of other therapies like the smoking cessation and stress management programs.

At the Center for Health and Wellbeing, Coordinator of Wellness Programs Tracy Zeeger said last spring's decision to add free meditation classes - which became popular right away and continue to bring in about seven students per class - twice a week was encouraged by University Health Center Director Sacared Bodison as a means to bolster the alternative medicine programs at the health center. Zeeger said she has also seen an increase in her appointments for wellness counseling, where she incorporates meditation techniques like concentrated breathing and guided visual imagery into offerings such as relaxation training.

"Meditation falls very neatly into the category of wellness in that it not only promotes physical health but mental and spiritual health as well," Zeeger said. "It can help with students who suffer from depression or mild anxiety. … There are alternatives to prescription pills."

Attendance at the meditation class tallies about as many as the main lobby for the Center of Health and Wellbeing can comfortably hold.

At the Meditation Club meeting on McKeldin Mall Monday, about 30 students gathered in a circle, casting long shadows under the glare of the street lamp as they practiced meditation in silence. The club encourages students from all religious backgrounds to attend, junior history major Ryan Zembik said, and has helped him with stress and controlling his temper.
Continued...

Labels: Allison Stice, anxiety, college, meditation, stress, students

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

7 Things that Sap Your Spiritual Energy

Friday July 25, 2008

by Janice Taylor, Life & Wellness Coach and 50 pound big-time-loser.

What is seriously sapping your spiritual energy? Your resolve? Your energy?

Our Lady of Weight Loss's
Top Seven Things that Sap Your Spiritual Energy

1. CLUTTER silently gnaws, bites, and nibbles away at your calm center as it takes up valuable air and space.

What to do? Clean up, of course! Make order (humans love order). Read "Miracle of Clearing Proportions."

2. LOUD NOISES grate, aggravate, annoy and irritate and can wind you up and drive you mad!

What to do? Wear ear plugs! From $1 to $187.50

3. AIR POLLUTION can negatively impact on our health, cause coughs, burning eyes, breathing problems and even death (which would surely sap spiritual energy).

What to do? True, we have no choice but to breathe, however, we can avoid high-traffic industrialized areas on poor air quality days (my head is spinning that we've created such a planet). Protect yourself and the air you breath!

4. DEHYDRATION dries, shrivels and depresses. Our bodies are more than 75 percent water, our blood is more than 80 percent water, our muscles more than 75 percent water and our brains more than 76 percent water! We NEED water to think!

What to do? Bottoms up, plain and simple. Drink 6 to 8 glasses every day! Our Lady has plenty to say on the topic!

5. WORRYING clutters the mind, drains, takes up valuable thinking time and carries some heavy-duty negative health effects with it.

What to do? Meditate, listen to music, chant!

6. SLEEP DEPRIVATION brings on feelings of irritability, impatience and depression. It weakens the immune system and leaves dark circles on ones eyes.

What to do? Get a good night's rest! (Duh!) Stanford U. has some tips on sleeping!

7. TELEVISION deadens the mind and puts you into a non-active, non-thinking state. You disappear all right, but not in a good way.

What to do? Escape into a book. Or into something interactive that teaches. I highly recommend EdHeads.org. Have FUN!

Spread the word, NOT the icing,
Janice

Labels: anxiety, Janice Taylor, pollution, spiritual energy, TV

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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Book Review: How did we become so anxious?

by Judith Timson
March 18, 2008

In her compulsively readable new book, A Brief History of Anxiety (Yours & Mine), Toronto author Patricia Pearson reports that more than 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety.

Ms. Pearson herself has battled her way back from debilitating anxiety attacks, one of which involved frantically ordering crates of freeze-dried vegetables in case the pandemic flu hit and there was no fresh food available.

After reading her book, rich in humour and insight, I came to the grateful conclusion that I was (barely) within the normal range of anxiety. I know people who are not so lucky, burdened with clinical anxiety that inhibits their lives.

But how did we all get so anxious? It can't all be from watching CNN.

Ms. Pearson thinks anxiety is spreading through our culture because "we need, on a collective, cultural and spiritual level, to grow." There's also the matter of control - we wish desperately to control what is going to happen to us, and if modern life has rammed home anything to us, it is that we have little control.

Workplace angst is a major component of this modern condition. Julie McCarthy, a professor of organizational behaviour at the Rotman School of Management, says new statistics show that "in North America, 25 per cent of workers feel anxious most days in a week and that 44 per cent are anxious about losing their jobs."

I can believe that. Our jobs are insecure, the demands of new technologies are overwhelming and our bosses, suffering from bottom-line anxiety themselves, just aren't very nice to us any more. Hence the feeling of working throughout the day with your stomach clenched.

Of course the flipside of workplace anxiety involves workaholics using their jobs to keep all their other anxieties at bay. Self-medication through BlackBerry use. If I'm at work, the feeling goes, I can control the universe. If I'm at work, I don't have to be thinking about all the other things in my life that make me anxious.

But it's the kids I'm really worried about.

Ms. Pearson argues that anxiety in young adults is about the search for emotional attachment, but my guess is that low-grade (and not clinical) anxiety is exacerbated by a number of factors - including seeing their parents worried about money, work and health all the time, not to mention transmitting a hyper-realized state of global anxiety (cyber-terrorist attacks, anyone?). Children's anxiety can also be heightened by overweening parenting. (I shudder when I remember how overprotective I was of my children, "streetproofing" them into such paranoia that they probably thought they were living in a Martin Scorsese movie).

And certainly there's the foreboding sense many kids of all ages have that they simply have to succeed. Or else. A long-time philosophy professor told me he has never seen such driven students as the ones today: "They know that the world is no longer their oyster, that they can't depend on it to validate them, and that they have to differentiate themselves."

It's no wonder, then, with all this anxiety, that people young and old are desperate for ways, pharmaceutical and otherwise, to calm down and cope.

Ms. Pearson, having given up on medication, hints that visiting her local church is doing her a world of good. Others look to yoga and its calming properties, and there are lineups to get into "mindfulness programs," which teach people how to find the "stillness" at the centre of their beings.

The birth of anxiety as the disease of our times has actually been a progression from the paranoia of the 1960s, which became the depression of the 1980s and 1990s, and is now presenting as anxiety in the 21st century. What's next?

It would be nice to think that all our relaxation techniques will eventually pay off, that serenity will rule and the calm will inherit the earth.

Labels: A Brief History of Anxiety, Americans, anxiety, children, church, control, Judith Timson, Patricia Pearson, workers

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Friday, January 04, 2008

Women and religion

By BONNIE ERBE

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

It is easy to see why women suffer less anxiety when they are active in religious organizations. Women most often make up the backbones of their churches/temples/mosques, even though most major religions exclude them from leadership. Clearly women derive much from their participation or they would not take part. What is harder to understand is why men do not enjoy similar benefits from these affiliations or why there's such a marked gender difference on this issue.

A new study produced by Temple University's Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., and published in Science Daily magazine and sciencedaily.com, revealed the following results. Women who were active in organized religious communities (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) and who later became disengaged were more than three times more likely to suffer generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported "always having been active."

"Conversely, men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression when compared to men who had always been religiously active."

Gender differences in medicine are now widely proven. Women get certain diseases more or less frequently than men, have different reactions to drugs, fare better with certain types of surgery and (of course) have different hormones than do men. It's no mystery that a whole field of medicine has arisen during the past two decades to study and treat men and women differently.

It's less apparent why religious affiliation would impact men and women so differently. I'm a big believer in mind over matter. We've all heard about cancer patients who outlived doctors' expectations by a matter of years. We all know terrific "fighters" who braved the odds and took on their illnesses, while others succumbed quickly to them. But victors and the vanquished are represented in both genders.

What makes religion so much more of an antidepressant and anti-anxiety agent for women? Are women better, more fervent believers than men? According to legendary stereotype, men are more practical, less emotional and more realistic than women. (I'm not saying I buy into these stereotypes -- I merely raise them as common assumptions.) Do these putative attributes make women less susceptible to religion, less religious than men?

It was after all a man (Karl Marx) who, however discredited he may have been on other fronts, wrote, "Religion is the opium of the people."

The study's author offers an entirely different potential explanation for these gender differences. Dr. Maselko is quoted as saying, "Women are simply more integrated into the social networks of their religious communities. When they stop attending religious services, they lose access to that network and all its potential benefits. Men may not be as integrated into the religious community in the first place and so may not suffer the negative consequences of leaving."

While she may be right, her explanation makes two assumptions, one of which may be wrong and the other of which is controversial. The first, that when women stop going to church they lose touch with the social networks they formed while going, may be wrong. The second, more controversial, is that the "social networking" women take part in at church, rather than their actual belief in God, that decreases their anxiety and depression levels and improves their health. It would be far less controversial to presume most religious women would attribute their improved mental health to their belief system and to their faith, rather than to their church-based support networks.

It is also counterintuitive on at least one level to believe that men derive less from church-going than do women. Men occupy the loftiest positions in church hierarchy, decide church doctrine and interpret religious law. More importantly most believers see God as a male form.

Wouldn't men then also get more out of church-going than women?

And yet experts say no. Clearly we're from different planets.

(Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe(at)CompuServe.com.)

Labels: anxiety, Bonnie Erbe, men, religion, Science Daily, Temple University, women

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

Religious faith may help stroke victims: study

By Ed Stoddard Thu Feb 15, 4:24 PM ET

DALLAS (Reuters) - People of faith have long contended that the power of prayer can help heal the sick. Now a study conducted in Rome suggests that religious faith may help people recover from a stroke.

Researchers at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center in the Italian capital of Rome interviewed 132 stroke survivors about their religious beliefs and spirituality. The median age of the study participants was 72.

The responses were compared with their scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, a self-assessment tool.

"The analysis showed higher scores on the anxiety and depression scale correlated significantly with lower scores on the religious and spirituality questionnaire," said the American Heart Association, which publishes Stroke.

"The association remained significant after adjusting for other factors that could influence a stroke patient's degree of emotional distress (such as mental and physical functioning, living conditions and marital status)," it said in a statement.

The reasons for this possible link between faith and post-stroke emotional distress are hard to pin down, though the researchers gave tentative explanations.

"Religious people who are active in their communities are more likely to receive external aid that can be provided by volunteers," said Dr. Salvatore Giaquinto, chairman of the department of rehabilitation at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center.

"Social support lets them experience feelings of care, love and esteem. The new experience of support and the background of faith tell the patients that they are not alone."

The research chimes to some extent with other studies that have suggested that spiritual pursuits such as reciting the rosary and yoga chanting may be beneficial for heart rate variability and stress relief.

But some researchers say the possible links uncovered in the Rome study should not be mistaken for direct causality.

"The study does not establish that religious beliefs will definitely reduce emotional distress but shows that people who are religious have better coping abilities," Dr. Lalit Kalra, a stroke professor at King's College London School of Medicine in Britain, wrote in an accompanying commentary.

"Hence, both these variables may define personal attributes of the patient, in other words religious beliefs do not make a person cope better but identify patients who have better abilities to cope with chronic illness," Kalra wrote.

The researchers did note that most of Rome's residents are Catholic. But they said their findings might extend to other religions as well.

Labels: anxiety, depression, Ed Stoddard, faith, prayer, religion, spirituality, stroke