The Power of Prayer and Spirituality

A Columbia University research team was not prepared for what they found. They had been studying women in Korea undergoing in vitro fertilzation. Half were being prayed for, unknown to the women, by prayer groups in North America and Australia. The rest represented a control group for whom no prayers were said. The women who were prayed for, it turned out, were twice as likely to get pregnant, with a 50 percent pregnancy rate vs 23 percent for women in the control group. According to lead author Dr Rogerio Lobo: "I didn't believe it, really. Because it stands out there as controversial, we wondered whether we should publish it, but our feeling was, it was significant."

To date, there have been about 1,200 studies on the healing power of faith and the health effects of spirituality, according to Dr Harold Koenig, founder of the Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality at Duke University. Four studies he has been involved in include:

• A 1998 study of nearly 4,000 people aged 65 years and older which found the risk of diastolic hypertension 40 percent lower among people who attended religious services at least once a week and prayed or studied the Bible at least daily.

• A 1997 study of more than 1,700 older adults from North Carolina which found that persons who attended church at least once a week were only half as likely as non-attenders to have elevated levels of interleukin-6, an immune system protein involved in a wide variety of age-related diseases.

• A study of 542 patients aged 60 or older admitted to Duke University Medical Center which found those who attended religious services weekly or more reduced hospital stays by more than half. People with no religious affiliation spent an average of 25 days in the hospital compared to 11 days for patients affiliated with some religious denomination. Patients who attended religious services weekly or more also were 43 percent less likely to have been hospitalized in the previous year.

One of his studies also included 87 depressed older adults, which found those who recovered from depression the fastest corresponded to the extent of their religious belief.

Skeptics cite the placebo effect as a probable cause of the benefits of spiritual belief, together with the fact that religious communities offer the kind of support networks that reduce stress and ease mental anguish. Additionally, those who attend religious services have better health habits, such as drinking and smoking less. Finally, religions encourage marriage, which is a reliable predictor of longer life.

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