Religious belief + cancer = Prolonged life?
Seema Singh -
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 11:25 AM
Several scientific studies have studied the effect of religiosity on cancer survival, sometimes even on the risk of getting certain cancers.
A new study in today's JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) shows that cancer patients, with strong religious belief, and hence positive religious coping, are about three times as likely to receive intensive life-prolonging care (such as mechanical ventilation or cardiopulmonary resuscitation) than those with low level of religious coping.
This may be a strong indicator of the type of treatment received at end of life, say Andrea C. Phelps of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and colleagues.
For patients facing a life-threatening illness, religious coping, such as through prayer, meditation and religious study can offer patients a sense of meaning, comfort, control and personal growth, say many experts.
"Positive religious coping has been widely associated with improved psychological adjustment to stressors including serious illness," the authors write. "These results suggest that relying upon religion to cope with terminal cancer may contribute to receiving aggressive medical care near death."
Researchers suggest that clinicians should recognize and be sensitive to the influence of religious coping on medical decisions and goals of care towards the end of life.
The killer and traumatic disease that cancer is, several studies have looked at if and how religion plays any role in cancer patients' life. This meta analysis of 17 studies in the last 40 years in the September 2008 issue of the European Journal of Cancer was undertaken to verify earlier results which showed significantly lower risks for certain cancers among members of Christian religious communities than in general population.
But it found that in studies in which adjustment was also made for healthy habits, no reduction in risk for cancer was observed. Its conclusion: "The Most important factor in the correlation between membership in a religious Christian community and risk for cancer is the healthy lifestyle inherent in religious practice in these communities."
This applies to other religious communities as well -- all religions, in their original undistorted form, preach healthy practices, right?
Bottom line: the cliché ‘faith can move mountains' can be interpreted in many ways; one can choose to have faith in oneself, a supreme being (God, if you will), Nature... The outcomes in disease management are positive.