TruthBook Religious News Blog

by Phil Davis

When the topic of health-care reform is so focused on economics and politics, I often think of a woman in the Gospels who had been hemorrhaging for many years. Who knows what her actual problem was, but it was severe enough that she had spent all her financial assets on the medical system of her time and was no better for it. In her desperate need, she reached out to Jesus Christ and was instantly healed.

What's the point of this story? Is it an indictment of a cold and heartless society not providing the necessary financial resources to give her better care? Is it an indictment of a health care system that didn't heal over many years? Some might think so. This is where the economics and politics come in. But I see it differently.

Obviously, the woman needed healing of her hemorrhaging. And yet, I feel she was reaching out for something beyond just another method to fix the body. She was probably yearning to have a deeper sense of her well-being that went beyond physical health...

Please see "external source" for this complete article. And for a Urantia Book perspective on this miracle of Jesus please see HERE

Labels: healing, health, hemorrhage, Jesus, The Urantia Book

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Does Prayer Work? Do Prayer Studies Work?

By Wendy Cadge
June 25, 2009

Can the efficacy of prayer be determined through a double-blind clinical trial? Do studies measure prayer in ways that even make sense? Perhaps we’re learning more about medical science than about the healing power of prayer.
Image of Buddhist Monk performing healing ceremony courtesy of kevsunblush under Creative Commons license.

On March 31, 2006, the New York Times published a front page article under the headline, “Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer.” The article reported the results of a multiyear study designed to determine whether prayers offered by strangers influenced the recovery of people undergoing heart surgery—they did not.

Published in the prominent American Heart Journal, this was the latest in a line of medical research studies published over the past forty years that sought the answer to this hotly debated question.

But do these findings actually lead to a final conclusion that intercessory prayer does not help people recover from heart surgery? Can such a question be answered through a double-blind clinical trial? Is prayer “measured” in these studies in ways that even make sense?

The health care providers I interviewed for my book about religion and spirituality in hospitals asked me some of these questions; wanting to know what I thought about intercessory prayer studies as a scholar of religion. Knowing nothing about them I began to read, recently publishing in the Journal of Religion what I believe to be the first social history of medical studies of intercessory prayer.

Between 1965 and 2006, about 75 researchers working in small teams published eighteen research articles in English language medical literature reporting on intercessory prayer studies. The Cochrane Review (an organization that compiles medical studies on specific topics to offer clear recommendations) analyzed the literature—first in the 1990s, and several times since. While initially they suggested further study of intercessory prayer, TCR recently called for an end to such studies.

The efficacy of prayer as an adjunct to healing has been debated for many years. First it was thought to be effective, then, not. And now, the debate is rekindled. Please click on "external source" to access the complete article.

Labels: healing, intercessory prayer, prayer, Wendy Cadge

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

The Science Of Spirituality
Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

All Things Considered, May 21, 2009 · Ninety percent of Americans say they pray — for their health, or their love life or their final exams. But does prayer do any good?

For decades, scientists have tried to test the power of prayer and positive thinking, with mixed results. Now some scientists are fording new — and controversial — territory.

This is one of a five-part series currently running on National Public Radio (All Things Considered). This article can also be run as audio from the link below. It is well-worth the time it takes, and nice to know that such intensive research is being done on spirituality. This site has all the previous presentations as well.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: All Things Considered, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, healing, NPR radio, positive thinking, prayer, spirituality

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Sunday, April 05, 2009

More Than Medicine to Heal

Reported by: Liz Bonis

Researchers say what some call “The God Cure” seems to play a critical role in recovery.

Cole Jackson is an active college student now, but several years ago he needed serious surgery for condition called Chron's. It's an inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] where the immune system attacks the gastrointestinal tract. It is extremely painful.

“Before surgery I lost about 30 pounds,” Cold said. Medically, he has recovered so well that he now trains to run marathons.

At that time however, he said it wasn't just about the medical recovery; he made what you might call a sort of deal with God, and in the end, he says it may have played a significant role in his recovery.

“Lying in the hospital bed the night before surgery, I prayed to God and I asked him to show me my purpose in life. I placed all my pain and all my worries in the hands of God…to this day, I believe I will never have to endure as much pain as I did.”

A medical team has just published a new study which says he may be right. When Dr. Michael Yi and health psychologist Sian Cotton studied 155 adolescents with IBD and asked them about things like--how often they attended religious services, how often they prayed, whether they considered themselves to be spiritual--sure enough, they found when it comes to health and healing, with IBD or even without: “Spirituality had the biggest impact on quality of life,” Dr. Yi said.

That was found to be true not just for physical health but for mental health too. Researchers are now following up on this research to see if it applies to common childhood illnesses such as asthma.

“In general, the higher spiritual well-being was related not only to quality of life, but better emotional feeling…so less depression, less anxiety,” Yi said.

Cole said anyone who wants a spiritual connection can have one. The new study shows it helps well being, even without a chronic disease.

Cole said, “It's basically talking to God, and talking to Him like He's your best friend, say anything that's on your mind, that's what I did, and ever since, my life has changed for the better.”

Labels: Dr. Michael Yi, God, healing, Liz Bonis, mental health, Sian Cotton, spirituality

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Friday, October 17, 2008

A Car Crash, A Five-Year Coma, and The Inner Voice

This video is the story of a young girl who suffered a brain injury in a car crash, after which she endured a five-year coma. During that period of time, she was sustained in her inner self by her relationship with God. In the video, she relates her experience, during which she maintained much of her consciousness, and she expresses a desire to help others who are searching for assurance of God and the assurances of faith.

Labels: Allison Zopel, coma, consciousness, God, healing, inner peace, spirituality, The Urantia Book, video

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Hospitals offer alternative therapies for mind, body & spirit

Posted by Heather VanNest

St. Petersburg, Florida--When nurses tried to insert an IV into patient Linda Aron's hand, she was so anxious over the impending operation to fix her acid reflux that they simply had to stop.

Instead of continuing to poke and prod Aron, nurses at Grinnell (Iowa) Regional Medical Center called in a massage therapist to rub her shoulders and arms to help her relax. Within 10 minutes, Aron had an IV in place.

To meet patient demand and enhance the hospital experience, more hospitals like Grinnell offer patients complementary and alternative treatments. The American Hospital Association says today that 37% of hospitals around the USA make complementary and alternative treatments available — including acupuncture, touch therapy, and music and art therapy.

A similar survey by the hospital group in 2005 found that one in four hospitals offered such services.

Patients such as Aron, 56, of Grinnell (population: 9,100), say they are surprised at how some of these therapies make a difference in their hospital experience.alter

And, to help speed her recovery and relieve pain from the surgery, Aron currently receives weekly acupuncture from the hospital in Grinnell as an outpatient. She pays the $55 fee out of her own pocket.

"This is a movement toward 'patient-centered' care," says Sita Ananth, director of knowledge services for the Samueli Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based non-profit that studies alternative therapies. "Many hospital mission statements are to serve the mind, body and spiritual needs of their patients."

Success measured in patient satisfaction

Ananth also points to the lucrative market potential of these types of therapies for hospitals, although most hospitals have yet to see a profit. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, up to $19 billion a year is spent on alternative treatments. And the AHA's survey showed that much of that is paid out of pocket for patients — 71% of them pay cash.

While these types of therapies have a useful place in the hospital, more data are needed to understand how they work, says Andrew Schafer, chief physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "Complementary and alternative therapies must be scrutinized in terms of their risk-to-benefit ratio and be subjected to placebo-controlled studies.

The majority of hospitals say that patient satisfaction is the No. 1 way they determine if an alternative treatment is beneficial, closely followed by clinical data on a treatment. Cleveland Clinic just completed a complementary and alternative therapy pilot program for patients undergoing heart surgery. Half of the patients — more than 1,700 — opted for spiritual care, counseling, art, music, touch therapy or guided imagery, and 93% of patients surveyed said the services were helpful.

Guidance from doctor groups for patients with chronic pain has helped bolster doctors' acceptance of complementary treatments, says Richard Nahin, senior adviser for scientific coordination and outreach at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He cites new guidelines for treating lower back pain issued jointly last year by the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society, which suggest many alternative therapies as potential treatments. "As doctors become more aware, hospitals will also follow," Nahin says.

Not all doctors are on board

Yet the picture is not so rosy at certain centers. According to the AHA, 44% of hospitals that offer such therapies say that their programs have a mediocre or poor relationship with staff physicians.

Labels: healing, health, Heather VanNest, medicine, mind-body connection

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Study Entices Thoughts Of Hands-On Healing

By HILARY WALDMAN | Courant Staff Writer
July 28, 2008

Steeped in white-coat science since she earned her Ph.D. in cell biology at Columbia University 20 years ago, Gloria Gronowicz is about the last person you'd expect to put stock in the touchy-feely discipline of energy medicine.But then the University of Connecticut researcher saw it with her own eyes, under a high-power microscope in her own laboratory, where, once, only well-accepted biological building blocks — proteins, mitochondria, DNA and the like — got respect.

Therapeutic Touch performed by trained energy healers significantly stimulated the growth of bone and tendon cells in lab dishes.

Her results, recently published in two scientific journals, provide novel evidence that there may be a powerful energy field that, when channeled through human hands, can influence the course of events at a cellular level.

Gronowicz and others said more studies are needed to figure out how and why Therapeutic Touch seems to stimulate cell growth — and if the findings can be applied to patient care.

Through history and across cultures, spiritual healers have long believed that the laying on of hands could cure disease and relieve pain. In the last 30 years or so, many forms of energy healing — sometimes called Reiki, Qigong, Therapeutic Touch, or Healing Touch — have found their way into hospitals and other clinical settings.

Still, it is often derided as hocus-pocus, although some medical practitioners have come to accept it as a harmless diversion that, if nothing else, might relieve stress.

Even when early studies showed some evidence of healing in patients treated with energy therapies, it was impossible to say whether the improvement was a result of the touch. More likely, critics suggested, the nurturing therapy simply improved the patient's frame of mind, promoting a healing response.

Gronowicz was in the doubting camp. She had spent her career studying the biology of bone cells. Her work with hormones, growth factors and tissue engineering has shed light on the very elements of bone — a slow, sometimes tedious effort she hopes might someday help doctors find treatments for crippling diseases.

But when a colleague asked her to collaborate on an experiment looking into the power of Therapeutic Touch, she was curious. As a full professor in the department of surgery, with tenure and respect, Gronowicz had the stature to dabble in an endeavor that some of her scientific colleagues might criticize as a fool's errand.

She applied for a National Institutes of Health grant to fund an experiment designed to isolate the mind/body conundrum from the question of energy healing by applying Therapeutic Touch techniques to presumably inanimate bone cells cultured in an incubator.

At first, even the NIH's branch that funds research in alternative and complementary medicine turned her down. Eventually, she received $250,000 for her study.

To put Therapeutic Touch to the test, cell cultures were divided into three groups.

One dish of cells was treated by a trained healer. A second set of cells was treated by untrained students who were instructed to hold their hands over a petri dish for 10 minutes twice a week. A third dish of cells stood ignored in its metal stand.

After the treatment, the dishes were returned to an incubator. Scientists who later examined the cells under the microscope didn't know which group each dish had been in.

To Gronowicz's astonishment, the cells treated by trained Therapeutic Touch practitioners grew faster and stronger than those that received the sham treatment, or none at all.

"Therapeutic Touch stimulated growth in bone, tendon and skin cells at statistically significant rates," Gronowicz said.

She tested the cells using several different biological markers for growth, and each test confirmed her finding. In one test, Gronowicz found that cells treated with Therapeutic Touch grew at double the rate of untreated cells.

In addition to seeing increased cell division under the microscope, the bone cell cultures treated with Therapeutic Touch also absorbed more calcium, the essential mineral for growing strong bones. Her findings were published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research and The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Gronowicz also looked at bone cancer cells. Cancer occurs when cells grow out of control, so a treatment that stimulates growth could be detrimental to people with cancer. But unlike healthy cells, bone cancer cells did not appear to be stimulated by the touch therapy — an interesting, though not fully explained, finding, Gronowicz said.

Beyond growing bones, the findings may begin to explain why people with strong social support systems appear to be healthier and recover from disease better than those who are isolated. Maybe it's not all in their heads.

"In this case, the bones didn't know, that's why what she did is so intriguing," Chesney said. "To our knowledge, those cells didn't know who was a healer and who wasn't."

Labels: energy medicine, Gloria Gronowicz, healing, Hilary Waldman, laying-on-of-hands, Reiki, science, Therapeutic Touch

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Christian Science is a 'kind and gentle religion'

By REBECCA AUBUT
Standard-Times correspondent
April 19, 2008 6:00 AM

In the late 19th century, after a severe fall that allegedly caused a spinal injury, Mary Baker Eddy turned to the Bible for support and then unexpectedly recovered. Even in childhood, Ms. Eddy was said to have heard the voice of God calling to her. Inspired by her recovery, Ms. Eddy spent the next few years devoted to biblical study and healing; the culmination of which led to the publication of her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and the birth of a new religious way of teaching, Christian Science.

At the core of Christian Science is the teaching that God and God's creation are entirely good and spiritual, and that God's infinite goodness, realized in prayer, heals.

The church's universal system of prayer-based Christian healing created roots by establishing a mother church in Boston, The Church of Christ, in 1879. New Bedford's branch of Christian Science began in 1893 and by 1910 had built and dedicated a church on County Street. By the mid-seventies another Christian Science church was built in the North End of New Bedford.

Here is 274 Union St., New Bedford, the group's main meeting area and the heart and soul of the congregation, their Reading Room. Reading Rooms were established early on for Christian Science members, as well as to be a place for people to come in and learn about Christian Science, says Ms. Booth.

A third generation Christian Science member, Ms. Booth opens the Reading Room's doors three times a week. Along with Marcia Albert, a member of Christian Science since the mid-eighties, she is happy to talk about the history of Christian Science

And though services seem to be dominated by study and reading, as Ms. Booth said, "Mrs. Eddy, with her writings, says that it's not intellectual in the sense that you don't have to be brilliant to embrace Christian Science."

Even with its deep spiritual outlook on life, Christian Science membership has continued to dwindle. Ms. Booth says the church doesn't count the number of its members and that despite a small, older congregation and the closing of many area branches, she still has faith that the church and its beliefs will always have a following.

"I know that the church will flourish, maybe not in this area, but in another community and grow," she said. "I don't have any doubts. It's well established and the writings stand by themselves because it's founded on the Bible; it can't help but go on."

Labels: Bible, Christian Science, healing, Mary Baker Eddy, religion

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Monday, April 07, 2008

Prayer can be powerful

April 6, 2008

Prayer can be powerful

By Amy Olson
Wausau Daily Herald

Though a belief in the power of prayer is central to many Christian denominations and other faiths, the healing it offers might have a greater effect on spiritual wounds than physical ailments.

Eleven-year-old Kara Neumann died March 23 of complications from untreated diabetes after her parents chose to pray for recovery at their town of Weston home rather than seek medical treatment.

Mike Neill, a chaplain at Aspirus Wausau Hospital, said he'd never personally encountered a family who chose prayer as a treatment over medical care.

Neill said he believes in prayer's power, noting it has benefits "even at times when we don't see healing" quickly or in the ways we seek. For many people, however, it can help them come to terms with what's happened and give them comfort. It also enables them to turn over what they can't control to God and helps them know God is with them.

"We are holistic beings," Neill said, and a person's emotional, physical and spiritual make-up are intertwined.

Research suggests many people pray and use other spiritual practices for healing. Forty-five percent of 31,000 people surveyed in 2004 used prayer for health reasons, according to research conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. Almost one quarter reported having others pray for them.

"There is already some preliminary evidence for a connection between prayer and related practices and health outcomes. For example, we've seen some evidence that religious affiliation and religious practices are associated with health and mortality -- in other words, with better health and longer life," wrote Catherine Stoney, program officer at the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine.

Still, researchers cannot determine cause and effect.

Studies suggest prayer seeking intervention -- called intercessory prayer -- has no effect as a treatment, said Dr. Steven Miles, professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics.

A study of almost 800 people published in 2001 by Mayo Clinic researchers found patients with heart conditions who were prayed for fared no better than those who were not. A 2006 study by Harvard Medical School researchers of about 1,200 heart bypass surgery patients found those who were prayed for had similar rates of complications within a month of their operations to those for whom no prayers were offered.

Labels: Amy Olson, healing, intercessory prayer, medicine

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Prayer and spirituality said to aid healing

Posted on Sat, Jan. 12, 2008
By REBECCA ROSEN LUM
Contra Costa Times

Scientists are taking a hard look at the value of faith as an instrument in healing -- including the "intercessory" or healing prayers said on behalf of others.

Numerous studies show a link between faith and outlook, faith and well-being, faith and healing times.

Scientists at such prestigious institutions as California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Duke University in North Carolina, and the George Washington University Institute for Spirituality and Health in the nation's capital are exploring the relationship of prayer and faith to healing.

More than half of physicians in an April survey by a group at the University of Chicago said that religion and spirituality significantly influence patients' health.

But the exact mechanism by which it works remains elusive.

Religion can help those with chronic conditions, including traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke and arthritis, say the authors of a study at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Yoga, reading of religious texts, meditation or the laying of hands have value in a clinical setting, the researchers concluded.

Hospital officials have long left patients' spiritual needs in the hands of chaplains, but they increasingly are reaching out to faith communities.

Official recognition

Parish nursing, or faith-community nursing, which combines spiritual and health services, has exploded since the American Nursing Association recognized the specialty in 2005.

Today, an estimated 10,000 faith-community nurses work in American congregations.

In San Francisco, a leading researcher in mind-body medicine found a positive link between intercessory prayer and the well-being of people with AIDS.

Prayed-for patients in a study by late University of California-San Francisco professor Elizabeth Targ had fewer setbacks and lived longer than a comparison group. A follow-up study found the same results. Targ later found a link between spirituality and well-being among women with breast cancer.

THE CONFLICT

Some academics recoil at the blurring of the line between faith and healthcare, saying prayer, meditation and other faith practices resist definition or measurement.

Far more studies show no link between religious belief and healing than a positive one, said Richard Sloan, a Columbia University behavioral medicine professor and the author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. Suggesting one can mislead people and put an unfair burden on them, he said.

"Look, nobody disputes that religion and spirituality bring comfort in a time of difficulty, but when spirituality is brought into medical care, it is another issue entirely," he said.

"It can do all sort of harm because it causes people to confuse medical care with other aspects of their lives," he said. "It can lead them to avoid conventional medical care. And it can lead them to believe their health problems are from inadequate faith and devotion."

Labels: American Nursing Association, faith, healing, health, intercessory prayer, Rebecca Rosen Lum, science, spirituality