JOIN USReligious services can prolong life
Going to religious services may lower the risk for premature death, a new study suggests. Researchers used data from a long-term study of 75,534 women. Over 16 years through 2012, their health and lifestyles were tracked, including their attendance at religious services. The report is in JAMA Internal Medicine.
After controlling for more than 2 dozen factors, the researchers found that compared with those who had never gone to services, attendance more than once a week was associated with a 33% lower risk for death from any cause, once a week with a 26% lower risk, and less than once a week with a 13% lower risk. Risks for mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer followed a similar pattern.
The researchers statistically eliminated the possibility of reverse causation — that is, that healthy people went to services more often than unhealthy ones. And they found that some variables, such as social support and a tendency not to smoke, contributed to the effect. But no matter how they analysed the data, the effect of attendance alone seemed to have
benefits.
“This suggests that there is something powerful about the communal religious experience,” said the senior author, Tyler J VanderWeele, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard. “These are systems of thought and practice shaped over millennia, and they are powerful.”