Spirituality Cuts Mortality Risk

Strong personal faith and a social support system such as that provided by membership in a church appear to reduce the risk of death in patients after cardiac surgery, according to a report presented at the Spirituality and Healing in Medicine conference last week. Dr. Harold G. Koenig of Duke University presented data on survival after open-heart surgery in the elderly at Dartmouth Medical Center in New Hampshire. Researchers there found that patients who reported strong faith, and who said they had depended on that faith to help them cope, had a mortality rate one-third lower than patients who did not report feeling a sense of faith.

Mercola.com