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THE GLOBE &
MAIL
Want to live a longer, healthier
life? The answer may be in your place of worship,
researchers are finding
By RON CSILLAG
Special to The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, April 2, 2002 – Page R5
TORONTO -- 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 of 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 the faithful
are immune from alcoholism or obesity. While not all
of us do such a great job of following 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 best-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
an interview, "whether it's stamp collecting,
trainspotting or a religion." However,
"the idea that the [benefit] comes from an
external god remains unproven."
In the scientific community, some
doggedly insist 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 scientists speak excitedly of a whole
new field: the epidemiology of religion, or
theosomatic medicine. Whether placebo or not, it has
opened a floodgate of findings.
At last count, more than 1,200
studies and 400 reviews, from Canada, Europe and the
United States, show that:
Those who regularly attend a house
of worship have demonstrably 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, than 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 that people who didn't attend services
regularly were twice as likely to die of
noncancerous digestive diseases, 21 per cent more
likely to die of cardiovascular disease, including
heart and stroke, and 66 oer cent 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 religion 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 no one'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 Health,
a 712-page bruiser that sifts through the studies
linking religious practice with health, and the far
more accessible God, Faith and Health by Dr. Jeff
Levin, North America'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 behaviours, 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, the 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 practise 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 goes through the motions, 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 you don'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 merit 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."
Spiritual spinach
If God is in the details, then the
real story on the health benefits of religion can be
found in the numbers, as they relate to the big
three North American killers:
Heart Disease:
Three U.S. studies that looked at
the Old Order Amish in Ohio, Pennsylvania and
Indiana found that males aged 40 to 69 had a
35-per-cent lower rate of circulatory diseases than
non-Amish men the same age. Researchers also found
that Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists are
respectively 35-per-cent and 57-per-cent less likely
to die of ischemic heart disease than those outside
those faiths.
Cancer:
Studies at UCLA, the University of
Utah and the University of Alberta have shown lower
overall death rates from cancer among Mormons of
both sexes. Mormons also get cancer in far fewer
numbers. A Danish study shows that Adventist men
have a significant advantage when it comes to
cancers of the colon and bladder, while Adventist
women have an advantage surviving breast cancer.
The University of Alberta study
found a big advantage among Canadian Hutterites,
both in cancer mortality and morbidity.
Dr. Jeff Levin cites scholarly
articles published early in the 20th century that
noted lower rates of cervical cancer in Jewish
women, attributed, it was believed, to the hygienic
benefit of circumcision of their partners. Lending
credence to that assumption is modern research
showing what Dr. Levin calls "an enormously
higher" rate of penile cancer in Hindus, who
are not typically circumcised, relative to Muslims,
who are, and in whom such cancers are almost unheard
of.
Dutch and American studies have
revealed notably lower rates of different cancers in
Jews, including stomach, bile passages, lungs,
pharynx, prostate and bladder. A University of Texas
study found that death rates due to lung cancer were
60-per-cent lower in Jewish men than gentile men.
Blood Pressure/Hypertension:
Again, Adventists do well, both in
lower systolic and diastolic readings. An Australian
study found half the rates of hypertension in
Adventists versus the general population.
A California study of adults with
Chinese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry found a
29-per-cent rate of hypertension in religiously
unaffiliated people -- fully twice that of the
religiously non-affiliated. The rate among
practising Buddhists was even lower, at 10.9 per
cent.
British researchers have found a
strong correlation between the so-called Protestant
ethic and Type A behaviour. Type A tendencies --
competitiveness, aggressiveness, haste, impatience
-- were found linked to higher occurrences of
illness, but only among some Protestants. Type A
behaviour was also associated with greater alcohol
consumption, but again, only among Protestants.
Among frequently churchgoing Catholics, Type A
behaviour was actually associated with less alcohol
consumption.
A Georgetown University study showed
that being ordained helps. It found that American
Baptist clergy were 40 per cent less likely to die
of hypertension complicated by heart disease than
the general population. Pastors of other
denominations needn't worry: The mortality advantage
for hypertension was found to be 41 per cent for
Lutherans and Episcopalians (Anglicans), and 29 per
cent for Presbyterian clergy. In Japan, priests of
the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism were exactly half as
likely to die from hypertension as other Japanese
men.
While there's no empirical evidence
to hold out one faith group as the healthiest, the
big overall winner may well be Seventh-day
Adventists, who lead in nearly all categories,
including fewer respiratory symptoms, better
cardiovascular health, lower mortality and higher
life expectancy.
Ron Csillag
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