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Spiritual Healing

Will turning to prayer soothe an ailing body and mind? Research is finding out

what others already seem to know.

 

By Jeanie Davis

 

Sept. 19, 2001 -- No doubt, the events that have gripped our nation in fear and

pain for more than a week have sent many seeking divine help. After witnessing

the acts of terrorism unfold, horrified Americans lined up to donate blood and

cash to help the victims. But what else could be done while rescuers mobilized

and New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania tried to recover from such a terrible

shock? Many could do nothing more but pray: for the victims, for the families,

and for the country. Long before the events of Sept. 11, this tactic has been

winning over converts among scientists as well, who have been studying the power

of prayer and spirituality in bringing real help to cure our ills. A few years

back, Roy L. was heading into his third heart procedure -- an angioplasty and

stent placement. Doctors were going to thread a catheter up a clogged artery,

open it up, and insert a little device, the stent, to prop it open. Later, he

learned he was on the receiving end of prayers before, during, and after the

procedure -- prayers sent from nuns, monks, priests, and rabbis all over the

world, with his name attached to them. "I'm not a church-going man, but I

believe in the Lord," he tells WebMD. "If somebody prays for me, I sure

appreciate it." And he's doing well now, with his heart problems anyway. The

only thing plaguing him presently is the onset of diabetes. Roy was part of a

pilot study looking at the effects of "distant prayer" on the outcome of

patients undergoing high-risk procedures. But did prayers help Roy survive the

angioplasty? Did they help ameliorate some of the stress that might have

complicated things? Or do a person's own religious beliefs -- our personal

prayers -- have an effect on well-being? Is there truly a link between mere

mortals and the almighty, as some recent neurological studies have seemed to

show? Those are questions that Krucoff and others are attempting to answer in a

growing number of studies. God Grabs Headlines Prayer has been in the news a

lot lately: It's been reported that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft kicks

off his morning Justice Department meetings with prayers and Bible readings. A

small book called The Prayer of Jabez has topped the New York Times' best-seller

list with its simple message about the life-altering power of prayer. Magazines

and web sites have trumpeted new neurological findings that suggest the human

brain is hard-wired to communicate, through prayer, with a higher being.

Research focusing on the power of prayer in healing has nearly doubled in the

past 10 years, says David Larson, MD, MSPH, president of the National Institute

for Healthcare Research, a private nonprofit agency. Even the NIH -- which

"refused to even review a study with the word prayer in it four years ago" -- is

now funding one prayer study through its Frontier Medicine Initiative. Although

it's not his study, Krucoff says it's nevertheless evidence that "things are

changing." Krucoff has been studying prayer and spirituality since 1996 -- and

practicing it much longer in his patient care. Earlier studies of the subject

were small and often flawed, he says. Some were in the form of anecdotal

reports: "descriptions of miracles ... in patients with cancer, pain syndromes,

heart disease," he says. Wired for Spirituality? For the past 30 years, Harvard

scientist Herbert Benson, MD, has conducted his own studies on prayer. He

focuses specifically on meditation, the Buddhist form of prayer, to understand

how mind affects body. All forms of prayer, he says, evoke a relaxation response

that quells stress, quiets the body, and promotes healing. Prayer involves

repetition -- of sounds, words -- and therein lies its healing effects, says

Benson. "For Buddhists, prayer is meditation. For Catholics, it's the rosary.

For Jews, it's called dovening. For Protestants, it's centering prayer. Every

single religion has its own way of doing it." Benson has documented on MRI brain

scans the physical changes that take place in the body when someone meditates.

When combined with recent research from the University of Pennsylvania, what

emerges is a picture of complex brain activity: As an individual goes deeper and

deeper into concentration, intense activity begins taking place in the brain's

parietal lobe circuits -- those that control a person's orientation in space and

establish distinctions between self and the world. Benson has documented a

"quietude" that then envelops the entire brain. The Impact of Religion on Health

But prayer is more than just repetition and physiological responses, says Harold

Koenig, MD, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at Duke and a

colleague of Krucoff's. Traditional religious beliefs have a variety of effects

on personal health, says Koenig, senior author of the Handbook of Religion and

Health, a new release that documents nearly 1,200 studies done on the effects of

prayer on health. "Nobody's prescribing religion as a treatment," Koenig tells

WebMD. "That's unethical. You can't tell patients to go to church twice week.

We're advocating that the doctor should learn what the spiritual needs of the

patient are and get the pastor to come in to give spiritually encouraging

reading materials. It's very sensible." When We Pray for Others But what of

so-called "distant prayer" -- often referred to as "intercessory prayer," as in

Krucoff's studies? "Intercessory prayer is prayer geared toward doing something

-- interrupting a heart attack or accomplishing healing," says Krucoff, who

wears numerous hats at Duke and at the local Veterans Affairs Medical Center. An

associate professor of medicine in cardiology, Krucoff also directs the Ischemia

Monitoring Core Laboratory and co-directs the MANTRA (Monitoring and

Actualization of Noetic Teachings) prayer study project at Duke. Long-time nurse

practitioner Suzanne Crater co-directs that study. Noetic trainings? "Those are

complementary therapies that do not involve tangible elements," says Krucoff.

"There are no herbs, no massages, no acupressure." The goal of prayer therapy is

to accomplish healing, yet "there are a lot of questions about what healing

means," Krucoff tells WebMD. "At this level of this work, there are many

philosophical debates that can emerge. The basic concept is this -- if you add

prayer to standard, high-tech treatment -- if you motivate a spiritual force or

energy, does it actually make people better, heal faster, get out of the

hospital faster, make them need fewer pills, suffer less?" Roy L. and 150 other

patients took part in MANTRA's pilot study. Krucoff and Crater are now involved

in the MANTRA trial's second phase, which will ultimately enroll 1,500 patients

undergoing angioplasty at nine clinical centers around the country. "We're

very high-tech people here. We're looking at whether in all of the energy and

interest we have put into systematic investigation of high-tech medicine, if we

have actually missed the boat. Have we ignored the rest of the human being --

the need for something more -- that could make all the high-tech stuff work

better?"