Is Religion Good for Your Health?
-David DeSteno
Submitted by Dr. Norman Jernigan
Studying the health benefits of religious activity involves special challenges, and researchers are developing new methods to meet them.

Is religion a medicine for what ails us? If we’re talking about physical and mental health, the answer has been difficult to come by. Large-scale studies have consistently shown a strong association between being religious and good health. For example, a paper published by Mayo Clinic researchers in 2001 found that people who regularly attend religious services tend to have lower rates of mortality and hospital admissions in any given period, as well as better cardiovascular function. The increase in death rates among people who never attend religious services compared with those who attend several times a week is comparable to that associated with smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

Yet it is difficult to know for certain whether these differences are due to religious observation itself or some related factor. When medical researchers want to determine how well a proposed treatment works, they typically conduct a randomized control trial (RCT). In an RCT where one group of participants is given a new medication and the other a placebo, people are assigned to different groups on the basis of something random like a coin flip. This ensures that the two groups will be similar in terms of pre-existing health, socioeconomic status, age, lifestyle, and other facts, so that any health improvement can be attributed to the medication itself rather than to health differences that preceded the trial.

When it comes to studying the health effects of religion, however, you can’t use an RCT. It wouldn’t be ethical or feasible to randomly assign people to go to church or stop going, let alone to alter their beliefs about God. As a result, studies demonstrate a link between attending services and better health are subject to important doubts. Maybe the reason that people who attend religious services are less depressed and have better cardiovascular health is that people who are depressed or unhealthy are unable to leave home to go to services.
Likewise, health benefits that appear to come from being religiously active might actually have a different source. There’s ample evidence that socializing is a boon to health. Perhaps people who go to worship services are benefiting from making and meeting friends, as opposed to the worship itself.

Ambiguities like these muddy any strong claims about the health benefits of religion. Given research showing that a majority of Americans (including a majority of family physicians) believe that religion can heal, and that 77% of hospitalized patients ask physicians to consider their spiritual needs, this debate isn’t just theoretical. Nearly 30 medical schools offer courses on religion, spirituality, and health, despite strenuous criticism from many medical professionals.

The only way to resolve the question is with more rigorous research. While RCTs aren’t possible, researchers can try to identify alternative explanations and control for them in analyzing the data. For instance, rigorously assessing people’s social networks can help make sure that religion isn’t just a proxy for companionship. And while it’s not possible to make people start or stop going to services, or even tell them how often to go, researchers can follow the patterns that people initiate to see what effects they have on health.

Several recent studies led by Harvard epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele do exactly this. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, using date from over 70,000 woman who were part of the Nurses Health Study from 1992 to 2012, VanderWeele and colleagues found that those who attended religious services at least once a week had 33% lower mortality, from any cause, over a 16-year period. In particular, deaths due to cancer or cardiovascular disease were 75% the rate among non-attenders. While religion-associated reductions in smoking and increased in social support explained some of the benefits, the data suggested that religion worked through other, as yet unexplained, avenues too.

VanderWeele’s team found a similar benefit when it came to suicide risk. Among the nurses, attending services at least once a week or more cut the suicide rate by 80%, even when controlling for diagnosis of depression, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Researchers asked detailed questions to isolate the effects of social support from that of religious activity and found that while social connection did have a positive effect, it didn’t completely explain the benefits religion offered.

Using data from other large scale, longitudinal studies, VanderWeele found that religiosity improves mental health. Attending services at least weekly or meditating regularly reduced feelings of depression and increases feelings of life satisfaction and purpose, even among adolescents. The health benefits are greater for those who attend services once a week or more than for those who only attend intermittently.

Ongoing surveys like these, as well as more targeted studies, show a strong link between religion and better physical and mental health. Of course, this doesn’t mean that religion should be prescribed as a medicine, either in addition to or in place of other established treatments. The choice to be spiritually active is a personal one, and religion is only one of the many factors that affect health. Nonetheless, it’s time for health sciences to take religion seriously and consider what it offers the body and mind.

Reciting prayers, chanting mantras, and engaging in deep contemplation affect worshipers in multiple ways. These practices slow breathing and brightening emotional states, with a direct positive impact on the cardiovascular system. They alter thought processes, imbuing situations that might seem hopeless with a sense of optimism, which is also linked to improved health.

There’s much yet to learn about how religious practice can affect our physiology. But if were not willing to accept the data, we won’t be able to identify the tools it uses to heal, some of which might well be separable from specific theological beliefs.

David DeSteno is a professor of Psychology at Northeaster University and host of the PRX podcast “How God Works: The Science Behind Spirituality.”

Pastor Lynette