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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Senior Citizens Who Attend Religious Services May
Prolong Lung Health
Pulmonary function ages at half the rate of
those who don't attend
By Randy Dotinga, Contributing Writer
Health Behavior News Service
November 1, 2006 - A new study suggests that churchgoing has more
benefits than spiritual growth and camaraderie it may boost lung
health too. Researchers found that seniors who regularly attended
religious services suffered from lower levels of pulmonary decline.
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It is important for doctors to acknowledge that
many patients have a religious life and that this aspect of their life
likely influences their health, said study lead author Dr. Joanna
Maselko, epidemiology research fellow at the Harvard School of Public
Health.
In recent years, researchers have explored the
subject of religion, examining whether spirituality and prayer may
contribute to physical well-being.
The new research looks at statistics from a
previous study of 1,174 seniors followed for an average of almost five
years starting in the late 1980s. The participants, ages 70 to 79,
answered questions about churchgoing and underwent tests of their lung
function.
The findings of the new study appear in the
upcoming issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
We found that the lungs of elderly persons who
continue to attend religious services stay healthier over time as
compared to those who do not attend religious services, Maselko said.
We also found that this could not be explained by
the fact that religious people tended to smoke less and or were more
physically active.
The lung test used peak expiratory flow rate
measures how fast people can exhale in liters of air per minute. Men who
regularly attended religious services had a slower rate of decline over
time dropping 3.71 liters less yearly compared to men who did not
attend. Women who attended services dropped 3.27 liters less than women
who never attended.
Together, these findings suggest that the
pulmonary function of those who attend services regularly ages at about
half the rate of those who do never attend, the researchers concluded.
Maselko said the researchers chose to look at lung
function because its a good indicator of other health problems and had
not been examined before in this context.
Richard Sloan, Ph.D., professor of behavioral
medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, was skeptical. He said
the positive effects of churchgoing didnt immediately appear in the
study, but only showed up after the participants have been studied for a
few years.
Why does [this effect] only begin at 75? Why not
65? asked Sloan, author of the upcoming book Blind Faith: The Unholy
Alliance of Religion and Medicine.
Sloan added that that its difficult to figure out
exactly what religious attendance means since people go to services for
so many reasons: religious devotion, habit, not having anything else to
do, to fend off loneliness.
Supporting Documents
Religious Service Attendance and Decline in Pulmonary Function in a High
Functioning Elderly Cohort
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