Medical Science Meets Spirituality
NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2000 — -- This weekend about 700 health professionals, clergy members, social workers and insurance providers will meet in Boston to discuss the power of prayer.
Part of a growing merger of spirituality and the sciences, the sixth annual Spirituality and Healing in Medicine conference, sponsored by Harvard Medical School, brings these various groups together to discuss the integration of mind/body medicine into mainstream health care.
“We are addressing God and belief through the language of the day, which is science,” explains Dr. Herbert Benson, conference founder and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Armed with stacks of data, Benson and his fellow believers hope to convince medical practitioners and the population in general that faith not only feels better, it’s better for us physically.
There have been about 1,200 studies on the healing power of faith and the health effects of spirituality, says Dr. Harold Koenig, founder of the Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
One of the largest of those studies tracked more than 5,000 Californians over 28 years. Led by Dr. William Strawbridge of the University of California at Berkeley, the research —released in 1997— showed that people who frequently attended religious services had lower death rates, were more likely to stop smoking, exercised more, had more social contacts and stayed married longer than those who did not.
There is also evidence that meditation positively affects people suffering from hypertension, depression, anxiety and infertility, among other conditions. According to Benson, 60 percent of physician visits are due to stress-related illnesses that can be remedied or improved with the physiologically soothing effects of chanting and meditation, or “the relaxation response.” Belief, he says, can reduce visits to doctors’ offices by 35 percent to 50 percent a year.
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