A Word From Your Parish Nurse                          Sheila Morales 

      sheila@chapelbts.org

                                                                                                                                    463-3173, Ext. 23

I know in my heart that spirituality and religion influence our health and I believe it does so for the better.  So I decided to look it up on the web and share some of the great research that supports this belief.  You can look up many research studies that have shown there is a relationship between spirituality/religion and our health at www.dukespiritualityandhealth.org and look under Research and Publications for more information.  Here are some summaries and facts of research that have been done on this fascinating subject. 

• Patients with COPD (emphysema) who had daily visits from the hospital chaplain had significantly less anxiety on discharge, shorter lengths of stay in hospital and higher satisfaction with the quality of care.

• Participants who attended religious services weekly or more were more likely to maintain positive health behaviors.  They had less depression, increase in social relationships and greater marital stability. 

• Less than weekly attendees had significantly higher rates of mortality from circulatory diseases, cancer, digestive disorders and respiratory illness than weekly or more frequent attendees.

• Patients who are highly religious by multiple indicators recover faster from depression.

• Among depressed patients, depression severity was associated with lower religious attendance, less prayer, less scripture reading and lower religiosity.

• African Americans who never attended religious services were twice as likely to die than those who attended more than once per week. 

• Researchers found that patients receiving hands-on direct contact prayer showed significantly greater improvement during follow-up.

• In women with metastatic breast cancer, results showed that spiritual expression was positively related to WBC count, lymphocyte count, T cells, helper T cells, cytoxic cells and natural killer cells.   

• Increases in physical illness severity were associated with decreases not only in religious attendance and other social types of religious activity, but also decreases in private religiousness.

• Frequency of religious attendance was associated with significantly lower levels of pain.

• Spirituality and religiosity were associated with greater social support, greater quality of life, less negative perceptions of illness, and less perceptions of depression.

• Older adults who derive a sense of meaning in life from religion have higher levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem and optimism.  

• Religiousness and spirituality predicted greater social support, fewer depressive symptoms, better cognitive function, and greater cooperativeness in medically ill hospitalized patients.

• In a study that predicted breast cancer survival, women with no religious denomination had 4 x the mortality of those with any religious affiliation.       

If that doesn’t convince you that spirituality and religion contributes to our health, I don’t know what will.  There are many more research studies that support this belief and too many to print.  So if you wonder whether praying to God really matters, it does.  If you wonder whether coming to church each week matters, it does.  If you wonder whether your belief in a higher power matters, it does.  Your health and well-being benefits from your spiritual beliefs and religiosity.  So keep praying, coming to Chapel and participating in your religion because it is you who benefits the most!  

                                                                                     God’s Peace and Love,       Sheila