The study in question comes from the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a group of doctors and researchers who have the numbers to prove that God is good for your health and  happiness.   Dr. David Larson, president and founder of the research group, is a psychiatrist trained in the days when that profession held that religion was harmful to people.  Most of his career he's been on a mission to find the facts on whether that's true.

In the sex survey, he found that church going women boasted the highest rates of marital satisfaction.  A fact he surmises is because those women were often married to church going men who seemed to understand the biblical directives on emotional nurture.  Such marriages not only had better sex, but according to a report published in a recent Journal of Family Psychology, also had higher levels of verbal collaboration and less conflict.

Elderly heart patients were 14 times less likely to die following surgery if they found strength and comfort in their religious faith.  A study of 4000 people over 65 found those who attended church weekly and who prayed daily had healthier blood pressure, ranking 40 percent better than those who weren't religious. 

Even just sleeping through the sermon, attending but not participating in active church life, is enough to add seven years to your life proves the data.  The Sunday service is good for smokers, who are four times less likely to have high blood pressure if they get their butt in church than those smokers who  don't.  A study of 1700 older adults found church helped improve immune system protein, and weekly church attendees cut their hospital stays by more than half when compared to patients who had no religious affiliation.

It's obvious that those in the healthcare industry should be checking out the data at the National Institute for Healthcare Research (www.nihr.org).  Similar findings are quoted by the Mid America Heart Institute, and authors like Dr. Larry Dossey who document that prayer has scientifically proven to have healing effect.

Family doctors can with good conscious be encouraging patients that practicing personal faith is good for their  health management.  A review of 80 studies on depression found persons who participate in a religious group and who highly value their faith are "at a substantially reduced risk of depressive disorder." 

There are dangers to the faith-healing connection.  The NIHR points to a study of 172 children who died because parents chose to rely only on prayer, rather than standard medicine.  Researchers from the University of California found that 140 of those children died from conditions that, with proper medical care, would have had "excellent" long-term survival rates.   Clinical conditions included dehydration's, diabetes, epilepsy, measles and
appendicitis.

"It's cases where parents went beyond healthy religion, went into something quite dangerous, a legalism that is not about faith," said Dr. Larson.  Rather he says the faith attitude that heals best is one where medicine is added to faith and where a patient has surrendered to the concept that they are in collaboration with God for their health. Based on the mounds of scientific data that NIHR has been initiating and collecting from universities and medical journals, it's wise to conclude the most healing approach for our human condition must include faith in God.