I was searching for health and prayer stories and stumbled upon this one from Beliefnet. If you want to learn more about the real statistics on prayer, click here for the full article. Here is an excerpt:
News stories, midmorning talk shows, and celebrity figures such as Deepak Chopra claim that prayer can improve health. Biologists, pundits, and others scoff at the same assertion. As is typical of so many debates regarding faith, people often see what they want to see: believers seeing proof of prayer and skeptics seeing disproof. This raises the question: What does the research show?
According to Dr. Harold Koenig, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University and the country’s leading authority on faith-and-medicine studies, academic research does show that prayer has beneficial health effects, although mainly for the person who does the praying. Studies of “intercessory” prayer–Person A prays for the health of Person B–find scant if any effect. But studies of “petitionary” prayer, in which a person prays for his or her own health or peace of mind, show tangible statistical results. When you pray for your own health–especially your own mental health, in cases of clinical depression–science suggests you may be on solid ground….
Clearly, Americans as a group think prayer is beneficial for health. A 1999 CBS News poll found that 80% of Americans believe prayer improves recovery from disease, and 63% believe doctors should pray with patients if asked–though only 34% think prayer should be “a standard part of the practice of medicine.”
The kicker is that a surprising number of scientists agree. Francis Collins, a Darwinian biologist and head of the federal government’s genome-sequencing initiative, says he prays daily. John Houghton, one of the world’s foremost atmospheric physicists and a leading proponent of global-warming theory, has written articles on the value of prayer. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Townes, principal inventor of the laser beam, says he prays each day. Pundits might snicker, but if regular prayer composes the mind and confers health benefits, the person who prays is following the intelligent course, regardless of the verity of any religion.
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