Spiritual Healing

Prayer and Spirituality in Health:
Ancient Practices, Science Today

People have used prayer and other spiritual practices for their own and others' health concerns for thousands of years. Investigations of these practices has begun quite recently, however, to better understand whether they work; if so, how; and for what diseases/conditions and people. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is supporting research in this arena.

Many Americans are using prayer and other spiritual practices. This was confirmed by findings from the largest and most comprehensive survey to date on Americans' use of complementary and alternative medicine. This survey of more than 31,000 adults, released in May 2004 by the National Center for Health Statistics and NCCAM, found that 36 percent had used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), when prayer was not included in the definition of CAM; when prayer was included in the definition of CAM, 62 percent had used CAM (all figures refer to use in the preceding 12 months). Among the respondents:

• 45 percent had used prayer for health reasons.
• 43 percent had prayed for their own health.
• Almost 25 percent had had others pray for them.
• Almost 10 percent had participated in a prayer group for their health.

Prayer was the therapy most commonly used among all the CAM therapies included in the survey. The report also addressed the use of other CAM approaches that can have a spiritual component, including meditation, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, and Reiki.

Stephen E. Straus, M.D., Director of NCCAM, said, "Prayer and spirituality for the benefit of health are relied upon by many Americans. NCCAM seeks to develop strategies to bring the most rigorous and detailed scientific approaches to studying these and other CAM practices so that we can understand the health impact that these practices might have."

Catherine Stoney, Ph.D., a Program Officer in NCCAM's Division of Extramural Research and Training, oversees many grants in NCCAM's mind-body portfolio. She noted: "There is already some preliminary evidence for a connection between prayer and related practices and health outcomes. For example, we've seen some evidence that religious affiliation and religious practices are associated with health and mortality--in other words, with better health and longer life. Such connections may involve immune function, cardiovascular function, and/or other physiological changes." However, she added, this is by no means proven: "For some individuals, religious practices are an effective way of coping with stress, and the beneficial health effects may come about by reducing stress. For others, religious practices may not result in reduced stress or be associated with health benefits. It can be challenging to separate out these effects because people have different ideas regarding the meaning of various practices. For this reason, we are particularly interested in understanding the impact of personal, positive meaning on health."

Other challenges in this very new field of research include:

• The fact that different researchers have defined prayer, spirituality, and related concepts in different ways
• A relative lack of standardized questionnaires (compared with many other fields of medicine)

The Science of Mind-Body Medicine