[todaysdate]
By Kimberly Burnham
Have you ever taken an anti-inflammatory, experienced a sprained and swollen ankle, had rheumatoid arthritis, or a sore throat? Inflammation is your body’s response to bacteria, a virus, an injury or some kind of tissue damage.
Besides taking anti-inflammatories, what have you tried in cases of inflammation? Have you tried visualization or prayer or other form of mind-body exercise? Study after study shows how powerful our minds are when it comes to shifting physical body symptoms.
A study in the Journal of Religion and Health found, “higher religion scores were associated with lower levels of inflammation in advanced cancer patients still undergoing anti-neoplastic therapies [cancer treatment].”
The 2014 research by Carlos Eduardo Paiva, Bianca Sakamoto Ribeiro Paiva, Sriram Yennurajalingam and David Hui found that “individual prayer activity (IPA) and global religion scores were associated with quality of life, symptoms, inflammatory markers, and survival.”
Researchers are still looking for the biological mechanisms involved but these preliminary findings were presented online in the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting.
It is interesting to note that the 221 patients in this study had advanced cancer and the study started when they were moved to a palliative care outpatient clinic. Each person was interviewed and then followed until death. And it seems from the study that their last days were made more comfortable by prayer and reliance on religious belief systems.
The two questions the study brings up for me is whether prayer or religious faith actually heals injured tissue. And what do “higher religion scores reflect?” Is it about the strength of the belief system or more about the time spent in a religious or spiritual practice?
