Going to church could help you live longer, study says
(CNN)Many Americans say they attend church because it helps them stay grounded and gives them spiritual guidance. A new study suggests that regular attendance may also help increase their lifespan.
Researchers
looked at data on nearly 75,000 middle-age female nurses in the United
States as part of the Nurses' Health Study. The participants answered
questions about whether they attended religious services regularly every
four years between 1992 and 2012, and about other aspects of their
lives over the years.
The
researchers found that women who went to church more than once a week
had a 33% lower risk of dying during the study period compared with
those who said they never went. Less-frequent attendance was also
associated with a lower risk of death, as women who attended once a week
or less than weekly had 26% and 13% lower risk of death, respectively.
Women
who regularly attended religious services also had higher rates of
social support and optimism, had lower rates of depression and were less
likely to smoke. However, the researchers took into account these
differences between churchgoers and non-churchgoers when they calculated
the decrease in death rates of 13% to 33%.
Going to church could have a number of
additional benefits that could, in turn, improve longevity, but the
researchers were not able to examine them with the available data.
Attendance could promote self-discipline and a sense of meaning and
purpose in life, or it could provide an experience of the transcendent,
said Tyler J. VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology in the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health. VanderWeele led the new research, which
was published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
"Our
study suggests that for health, the benefits outweigh the potentially
negative effects," such as guilt, anxiety or intolerance, VanderWeele
said.
Most of the women in the
study were Protestant or Catholic, so it is not clear whether a similar
association would be found between religious service attendance and
longevity for people of other Christian religions, Judaism or Islam.
The
study also did not explore the association in men. Previous research
suggests that male churchgoers also benefit, though their decrease in
death rate is not as large as among women, VanderWeele said.
"There
have been literally thousands of studies" looking at whether religion
is good for your health, said Dr. Dan German Blazer II, professor of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center.
The findings have been mixed about whether aspects of religious devotion
such as prayer and spirituality -- such as reading the Bible or other
religious literature -- improve longevity.
"The one (aspect) that is significantly
more predictive of good health is about religious service attendance,"
said Blazer, who wrote an editorial about the new study in the same
issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.
Most
people report that they are spiritual, and it is possible that actually
attending religious services is good for their health because they are
taking actions that are in line with their beliefs, Blazer said. "You
have a more integrated life in this sense." However, this explanation is
purely speculative, and studies have not explored this theory, he
added.
The suggestion that
attending religious services regularly could boost longevity has met
with some criticism in the field. Other researchers have pointed out
that the relationship could be due to other factors, such as the
possibility that healthier people are more likely to go to church,
perhaps because they are more mobile.
The
main strength of the current study is that the researchers were able to
look at whether participants reported attending religious services at
several points over many years, making it easier to find out which came
first, religious activity or disease and health outcomes, Blazer said.
Nevertheless,
Blazer warns that it is important not to make too much of the new
findings. "This study does not suggest that clinicians prescribe
attending religious services as a way to be more healthy," he said. It
was not meant to assess going to church as an actual medical
intervention.
On the other hand, the study does
suggest that "clinicians who know their patients well and follow them
over a period of time, like primary care doctors, inquire when it is
appropriate about their religious beliefs and practices," Blazer said.
That way, if patients say that attending religious services is important
to them, the doctor can help ensure that they maintain a good
relationship with their church, temple or mosque.
This
attitude about the place of religion in medical care is becoming more
common among health care professionals and has been introduced into the
curriculum of more and more medical schools, Blazer said.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/16/health/religion-lifespan-health/index.html (18/05/2018)
