Religious services aren’t just good for your soul – they might be good for your health.
A new study, reported in a journal published by the American Medical Association, says that those who attend church services more often actually have a better chance of staying alive in the long run.
Over a 20-year span, the study surveyed a group of more than 76,000 female nurses, most of whom were Catholic and Protestant. At the end of 20 years, more than 13,000 of them had died. The women who went to religious services more than once a week were 33 percent less likely to be in that group who died, compared to those who never attended services.
Tyler VanderWeele, a researcher at Harvard’s school of public health who co-wrote the study, said the effect diminished as the study participants decreased their service attendance.
Those who attended services once a week saw their odds of dying go down 26 percent. For those who attended less than weekly, the odds of dying decreased 13 percent.
That led the study’s authors to this striking recommendation: “Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that physicians could explore with their patients, as appropriate,” “Our results do not imply that health care professionals should prescribe attendance at religious services, but for those who already hold religious beliefs, attendance at services could be encouraged as a form of meaningful social participation.”
One of the team’s most striking findings was on breast cancer. Women who attended services were substantially less likely to die of it.
VanderWeele said that other studies have suggested a similar link between service attendance and decreased mortality, but his team aimed to prove that service attendance actually causes the better health outcomes.