Conger

Study finds link between a doctor’s faith and end of life care: The Church of England Newspaper, Sep 10 p 5. September 12, 2010

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

A doctor’s religious faith, or lack of faith, influences a patient’s end of life care, a study published in this month’s Journal of Medical Ethics, has concluded.

In a study published on-line Aug 23, Dr. Clive Seale, professor in the Centre for Health Sciences at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, found that self-identified agnostic and atheist physicians were almost twice as likely to take decisions that speed up the dying process as compared to their religious peers.

In a survey taken of over 3700 geriatric, palliative care, intensive care and general practice physicians in the UK, Dr. Seale received 2933 responses from physicians asking about their faith and religious beliefs, ethnicity, and views on assisted dying and euthanasia.  The survey also asked whether they had prescribed ‘terminal sedation’, giving patients a continuous deep sedation until they died, or if they had spoken to their patients about health care decisions judged likely to shorten life.

The results showed that Geriatricians—specialists in the care of the elderly—were more likely to be Hindu or Muslim, while hospice or palliative care physicians were more likely to be white Christians, who responded to questions about faith.  Overall, however, white doctors—the largest ethnic group—were those least likely to report strong religious beliefs.

The survey found strong links between a physician’s specialty and faith and the likelihood of discussing treatments judged likely to end the life of their patients.  Hospital specialists were ten times more likely to discuss life ending treatments than palliative care doctors, while those physicians who described themselves as “extremely” non-religious were twice as likely to have recommended treatments that would end life as compared to their religious counterparts.

The Seale survey also found a link between views on religious faith and support for assisted dying and euthanasia legislation, with palliative care specialists and those with strong religious beliefs the most strongly opposed to such legislation.

While the survey does not predict that all religious and non-religious doctors act in certain ways, Dr. Seale concluded that there was a need to acknowledge the links between a doctor’s religious beliefs and the clinical decisions they make.

Healing Prayer works, US study finds: The Church of England Newspaper, Aug 13, 2010 p 6. August 17, 2010

Sebastiano Ricci, "Christ Healing the Blind Man" (circa 1712-1716). National Gallery of Scotland

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

A study to be published next month in an American medical journal reports that “proximal intercessory prayer” (PIP) — when one or more people pray for someone in that person’s presence and with physical contact – has been found to have remarkable results in healing the sick.

The study, entitled “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique,” measured improvements in vision and hearing in economically disadvantaged areas of rural Mozambique where eyeglasses and hearing aids are not readily available.

“We chose to investigate ‘proximal’ prayer because that is how a lot of prayer for healing is actually practiced by Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians around the world,” Dr. Candy Gunther Brown of Indiana University, the study’s lead researcher, said.”

The study to be published in the September issue of the Southern Journal of Medicine is part of a larger research program conducted by medical and religion scholars funded by the John Templeton Foundation Flame of Love Project, on the cultural significance and experience of spiritual healing practices.

The success of Pentecostal Christians in healing the success was one reason for its explosive growth in the developing world, the authors said.  “When people feel that they have a serious need for healing, they are willing to try almost anything,” Dr. Brown said. “If they feel that a particular religious or spiritual practice healed them, they are much more likely to become an adherent. This phenomenon, more than any other, accounts for the growth of these Christian subgroups globally,” she suggested.

The researchers joined healing prayer teams from Iris Ministries and Global Awakening in Mozambique and using an audiometer and vision charts evaluated 14 subjects who reported impaired hearing and 11 who reported impaired vision—before and after receiving proximal intercessory prayer (PIP).

Dr. Brown said the study chose to test hearing and vision as changes could be measured by hearing machines and vision charts, while other ailments provided a less subjective standard of measurement.

They found that the study subjects exhibited statistically improved hearing and vision after receiving PIP.  Two with impaired hearing reduced the threshold at which they could detect sound by 50 decibels. Three subjects had their tested vision improve from 20/400 or worse to 20/80 or better. These improvements are much larger than those typically found in suggestion and hypnosis studies, the authors said.

One participant, an elderly woman named Maryam, initially reported that she could not see a person’s hand, with two upraised fingers, from a distance of one foot. An intercessor placed her hand over Maryam’s eyes, hugged her and prayed for her.  The intercessor then held up five fingers before Maryam, who could count them and was tested on an eye chart and able now to read the 20/125 line on a vision chart.

Scientific research on the benefits of intercessory prayer has produced contradictory results in recent years.  A 2006 Harvard Medical Schools study concluded that prayer had no effect on healing, but certainty of receiving prayer adversely affected health.

Critics of the Harvard study note that it focused on distant rather than intercessory prayer.  Those offering the prayer differed from the Mozambique study as the Harvard study was a multi-faith enterprise, and included only one group of Protestant intercessors: Silent Unity, a group which rejects the efficacy of prayers of supplication or petition as “useless.”

“If empirical research continues to indicate that PIP may be therapeutically beneficial, then — whether or not the mechanisms are adequately understood — there are ethical and nonpartisan public policy reasons to encourage further related research,” Dr. Brown said.

Faith can overcome alcohol abuse, US study finds: The Church of England Newspaper, July 9, 2010 p 5. July 16, 2010

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

Church attendance lowers the risk of alcohol abuse among teenagers, a study published in the United States has found, even for those who have a genetic pre-disposition for the disease.

In a paper that will appear in the September 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, researchers at the University of Colorado found that “adolescents who are raised to value religious concepts are less likely to develop problems with alcohol use, even in the presence of a genetic predisposition for doing so.”

However, the prophylactic effect of faith on alcohol abuse does not extend to young adults, the study found.

Researchers have long known that neither nature nor nurture by themselves leads to alcoholism, but are influenced by phenotypes, measurable traits or behaviors for the disease that are products of environment and genetics.  “Levels of alcohol-related phenotypes, such as frequencies of drinking and intoxication, can be dependent on social background,” explained Dr. Tanya Button, one of the authors of the study.

“For instance, people with a religious background may be less likely to express alcohol-related phenotypes than those from nonreligious backgrounds,” she said. “Furthermore, the influence of genes on these phenotypes also varies according to social background. We also know that genes play a more important role in alcohol-related phenotypes in people from urban backgrounds, unmarried women, and nonreligious individuals than those from rural backgrounds, married women, or those with a religious upbringing.”

The University of Colorado team examined 1,432 pairs of twins and found that “genetic factors could influence problem alcohol use more in nonreligious adolescents than adolescents with a greater religious outlook.”

Faith “exerted a strong enough influence over the behavior of religious individuals to override any genetic predisposition” towards alcoholism, Dr. Button said.  However, this was not true for young adults “for whom the genetic influence was consistent across levels of religiosity.”

The Colorado study was “evidence that problem alcohol use in adolescents is subject to controlling influences associated with religiosity, even when genetic risks are present,” Dr. Button concluded.

Church attendance helps combat depression study finds: The Church of England Newspaper, May 28, 2010 p 7. June 6, 2010

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

There is no scientific evidence that Alzheimer’s disease can be prevented or its onset slowed down, an independent panel of scientists convened by the US National Institute of Health (NIH) has determined.  However, an active church life and keeping physically and mentally fit were consistent with a decreased risk of the disease, the report found.

The study released by the NIH’s Office of Medical Applications of Research (OMAR) state-of-the-science conference program found that exercise, social interaction, brain puzzles, fish oil, nutritional supplements, or medications did not prevent the disease.  According to the Alzheimer’s Association’s report, Alzheimer’s Facts and Figures, 2010, there are over 5 million Americans living with the disease today.

The Alzheimer’s Research Trust Dementia 2010 reported that in Britain there were 822,000 people living with the disease.  This number is expected to pass the one million mark by 2025 the report found.  “People who reach the age of 65 have a one in three chance of having dementia before they die,” said the report’s author, Professor Alastair Gray of Oxford University’s Health Economic Research Centre in February.

The US panel reviewed 25 systematic reviews and 250 primary research studies, lead researcher Dr Martha Daviglus of Northwestern University said, and found that most studies could only show links, and did not prove cause and effect between a factor and disease prevention.

“We wish we could tell people that taking a pill or doing a puzzle every day would prevent this terrible disease, but current evidence doesn’t support this,” said Dr. Daviglus.

The panel examined scientific studies that took into account “nutrition, medical conditions, prescription and non-prescription medications, social/economic/behavioral factors, toxic environmental factors, and genetics.”

Only a few factors showed a “consistent link” with Alzheimer’s disease: diabetes, genetic predisposition, smoking, and depression.

Factors showing a “fairly consistent association” with decreased risk of the disease and a cognitive decline were: cognitive engagement and physical activities. However the “modification to risk” was “small to moderate” for Alzheimer’s and “small” for cognitive decline.

The current state of scientific evidence was not “enough to enable a confident assessment of links with [Alzheimer’s] or cognitive decline,” the report said, and “further research that addresses the limitations of existing studies is needed prior to be able to make recommendations on interventions.”

However, one of the studies reviewed found that regular church attendance was associated with less cognitive decline.    A 2003 paper published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences entitled “Religion and cognitive dysfunction in an elderly cohort,” cited in the US NIH study concluded that “religious attendance may offer mental stimulation that helps to maintain cognitive functioning in later life, particularly among older depressed women.”

The paper concluded that doctors should prescribe church attendance in certain situations.

“Given the possible benefits religious attendance may have on cognitive functioning, it may be appropriate in certain instances for clinicians to recommend that clients reengage in religious activities they may have given up as a result of their depression,” the 2003 paper concluded.

Health warning issued: CEN 6.06.08 p 7. June 7, 2008

Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.

Anglo-Catholicism may be harmful to your health, a study published in the April 25 issue of the Journal of Clinical and Molecular Allergy reports.

In a study of the health consequences of burning incense, researchers from the Department of Environmental Engineering at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University found that incense smoke contains pollutants that when inhaled, caused respiratory distress and allergic reactions.

“A typical composition of stick incense consists of 21% (by weight) of herbal and wood powder, 35% of fragrance material, 11% of adhesive powder, and 33% of bamboo stick” the study found and produced four times the amount of particulates as did a cigarette.

“The gas products from burning incense include CO, CO2, NO2, SO2,” and also emitted benzene and other volatile organic compounds. In Taiwan, “the air pollution in and around various temples has been documented to have harmful effects on health from the burning of incense” the study found.

However, the study noted that “there is no association between incense smoke and cancer.” Studies conducted in Hong Kong found “that, although incense was identified as a major source of exposure to nitrogen dioxide and airborne carcinogens, it had no effect on lung cancer risk among nonsmokers and, more intriguingly, it significantly reduced risk among the smokers.”

Scientists sought to explain this apparent anomaly by noting that those who burned incense and smoked cigarettes offset their cancer risks by having “relatively healthy diets.”

Whether the use of bells also ameliorates the health of risks of incense was not addressed in the study.

The Power of Positive Thinking has its limits: CEN 11.02.07 p 8. November 3, 2007

The power of positive thinking has no effect on cancer survival rates, a study published in the journal Cancer reports.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that emotional wellbeing had no effect on the chances of surviving head and neck cancer as those with positive emotions had an equal survival rate to those with negative emotions the study said.

“The belief that a patient’s psychological state can impact the course and outcome of their cancer is one that has been prominent among patients and medical professionals, alike,” the paper entitled, “Emotional well-being does not predict survival in head and neck cancer patients: A radiation therapy oncology group study,” said.

However, “this belief leads people to seek psychotherapy in the hopes of promoting survival. While there can be lots of emotional and social benefits of psychotherapy, patients should not seek such experiences solely on the expectation that they are extending their lives,” said Professor James C Coyne, the lead author of the study.

Over 1000 patients participating in radiation and chemotherapy trials completed tests quantifying their emotional wellbeing. The results showed that a patient’s emotional status was not a significant predictor of survival.
Positive thinking “neither affected progression or death directly, nor functioned as a lurking variable. The current results add to the weight of the evidence that emotional functioning is not an independent predictor of survival in cancer patients,” the study concluded.

Prof. Coyne said that while this study “may not end the debate, it does provide the evidence to-date that psychological factors are not independently prognostic in cancer management”.

While the study found that positive thinking did not prolong life, the authors noted that a positive emotional outlook was a benefit in its own right.