Spirituality may be tied to easier cancer course

[Wilikon]

Cancer patients who report more religiousness or spirituality may also experience fewer physical symptoms of cancer and treatment and more social connection, several new papers suggest.

The new analyses reviewed previous studies of spirituality involving more than 44,000 cancer patients altogether. The studies varied in many ways, but religion and spirituality were associated with better health regardless of specific religion or set of spiritual beliefs.

Some previous research has found this connection while others have not, said Heather Jim of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, who led one of the new studies.

“Patients should not be pressured into adopting religious or spiritual beliefs,” Jim said. “Although our data suggest that patients with greater religion/spirituality tend to have better perceived physical health, these are aggregate-level data.”

“Patients who are not religious or spiritual can also experience good health outcomes,” she said.

These studies relied on patients to report on their health, so they did not address objective cancer outcomes, she told Reuters Health by email.

For the impact of spirituality on physical health, the studies included more than 32,000 adult cancer patients with a range of cancer types and stages. Higher religious or spirituality scores were generally associated with better overall health.

A sense of connection to a being larger than oneself was associated with better physical function and fewer, or less severe, symptoms of cancer or treatment, according to patient reports.

Intrinsic religious belief was also tied to better physical function.

Actual practice of religion, like church attendance, prayer, or meditation, was not related to physical health.

“Cancer patients who reported higher meaning, purpose, and spiritual connection in life also reported better physical health, as did patients who reported more positive religious or spiritual explanations for the cancer (versus a sense of fatalism or anger towards God),” Jim said.

Religious people may engage in more healthy behaviors, avoiding things like alcohol and drugs, and religious communities may provide social support, transportation to appointments, provision of meals and other basic needs, she said.

Spirituality may enhance positive emotion such as love, forgiveness, and comfort and reduce stress, she added.

“Conversely, spiritual distress is associated with greater depression and decreased adherence to medical recommendations among cancer patients,” Jim said. “However, we can’t say for sure that religion/spirituality causes better perceived health.”

Patients with cancer may question their religious and spiritual beliefs and those with worse health may also experience greater spiritual distress, she said.

In an analysis of studies with more than 14,000 cancer patients, the researchers found that religiousness and spirituality were associated with better social health, stronger roles and relationships in the community.

Spiritual well being, having a benevolent image of God, and holding religious beliefs were all associated with social health, regardless of demographics like age, race or gender, as reported in Cancer.

John M. Salsman, senior author on both the physical and social health analyses, stressed that religiousness and spirituality are multidimensional. He conducted the research while at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, but is now at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Religious “beliefs” were linked to health outcomes, but often not as strongly as other concepts like daily spiritual experiences and spiritual well being, Salsman told Reuters Health by email.

Most religions involve group meetings and carry a social element, which might explain part of the link to social health, he said. But it is still not certain whether religiousness or spirituality causes symptom relief or better physical function during cancer treatment, he said.

“One plausible explanation is that when patients view God as a loving, benevolent being, that may provide a source of comfort and strength to the patient, allowing him or her to manage the distressing nature of their symptoms even if the frequency of symptoms did not change,” Salsman said.

“An alternate example from personality research is that people who are more likely to be religious are more agreeable in nature,” he said. “They would also be less likely to complain about their physical health, even in the midst of treatment for cancer.”

Cancer treatment specialists should keep in mind that patients who are experiencing spiritual distress may benefit from talking with a chaplain or a member of their religious or spiritual community, Jim said.


http://news.yahoo.com/spirituality-may-tied-easier-cancer-course-144350920.html

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[RealBitcoin]

Nothing new, i already suspected that spirituality is connected to the health of one person.

Although i`m not religious, but I occasionally meditate just to relieve stress.

It's obvious, the body is an organism , and cancer cells/ tumors, are a signal that the body is not in unity. If the tumor/defected cells go wild and start replicating madly is sort of the equivalent of a country where X peoply rebel against Y.

It's obvious that the whole organism is unhealthy when an internal conflict is occuring, whatever that organism may be. If there is internal peace (achieve that through any spiritual practice you want), then the health is perfect.

Of course you need to eat healthy too, you can be perfectly in unity, when you put poison in your body you will get sick. Many vegetables, balanced dose of meat, and lots of grain and seed type foods with limited carbohydrates just to give you your daily dose of energy, are the perfect way to live.


This is why i thought that religion is not necessarly a bad thing, but more like how it's used is the real question.


Use religion to achieve inner peace in your body, or to justify massive crusades and genocide? You decide!

[Wilikon]

Nothing new, i already suspected that spirituality is connected to the health of one person.

Although i`m not religious, but I occasionally meditate just to relieve stress.

It's obvious, the body is an organism , and cancer cells/ tumors, are a signal that the body is not in unity. If the tumor/defected cells go wild and start replicating madly is sort of the equivalent of a country where X peoply rebel against Y.

It's obvious that the whole organism is unhealthy when an internal conflict is occuring, whatever that organism may be. If there is internal peace (achieve that through any spiritual practice you want), then the health is perfect.

Of course you need to eat healthy too, you can be perfectly in unity, when you put poison in your body you will get sick. Many vegetables, balanced dose of meat, and lots of grain and seed type foods with limited carbohydrates just to give you your daily dose of energy, are the perfect way to live.


This is why i thought that religion is not necessarly a bad thing, but more like how it's used is the real question.


Use religion to achieve inner peace in your body, or to justify massive crusades and genocide? You decide!

There is a difference between faith and religion, is there?

 

[MakingMoneyHoney]

A person has both light and dark matter in them and I believe has control over what happens. From a religious perspective, I believe when you sin, you let the darkmatter grow, and when you ask for forgiveness for that sin, you can get cleaned of it. Sin begets sin, and you can see why when you realize this dark matter acts like a magnet for other dark matter. In this case, the light matter is healing you the more you have.

This video talking about CERN (that is dealing with antimatter) talks about how it works, better than I could. It's worth a watch the whole way through, but I made the link go to the right section: https://youtu.be/25OdhuSHxaA?t=17m58s

[samlanhan1]

I think true religion is just ancient cheat codes to health.

[clickerz]

This is maybe what we call the Holistic approach. You start cleansing your mind and body. Eating the right food especially  the fresh ones, fruits,fresh vegetables etc. Also practice meditations to cleanse tour inner-self.

[Snail2]

I think true religion is just ancient cheat codes to health.

Indeed if you read the Bible or the quran you'll find a bunch of good health advice. Some of those are outdated in these days, others are outdated in the more advanced countries but still valid on other parts of the world (like banning pork or eel) but some of those are are still valid like at least one day every week sitting down, resting and relaxing.

[BADecker]

Forms of spirituality usually include deeper thinking, and, meditation at least in a small way. Consider placebo action. Google it.

To my way of thinking, placebo action lies not only in some sugar or starch pill given in double blind tests. Rather, it can be anything, including meditation, suggestions of doctors and friends, and in the case for believers in God, even cures from God at times.

I have seen studies that suggest that placebo action occurs in as many as one third of all health activities. The interesting thing about this is that placebo action can work both ways. If you think you are going to get healthier, you will get healthier. If you think that you are going to get sicker, you will get sicker.

Look at this interesting point. If you get a cut on your finger, and it bleeds a little, in two weeks it is healed, almost without a trace. It happens naturally. You don't have to believe it. You don't have to be spiritual about it. In other words, health problems come and go all the time in your body.

Imagine that you have a health problem. You have this lingering pain, so you finally go to the doctor. The doctor tells you that you have bad cancer, and that you are only going to live for 3 months. The doctor's words are like a placebo. What do you do? You die in 3 months.

The doctor tells someone else that he has bad cancer and will die in 3 months. But, there is a treatment that works for this kind of cancer 95% of the time. And if you get on the treatment, you will almost for certain, live. What do you do? You get on the treatment and you live. But was it the treatment? or was it the placebo action that healed you?

Personally, I don't want a doctor influencing my spiritual activity. The human body is so complex that, now that medicine has found out as much as they have, your symptoms could fit all kinds of illnesses. Doctors are continually misdiagnosing things all the time these day. I don't want their mixed up placebo-action-diagnosis messing up my life. I'll self cure, using info that I and my friends dig up on the net, where I don't have to listen to some words of gloom and doom.

Of course, the doctor could tell me my problem is nothing. But I know enough about medicine, that I don't trust that he knows what he is talking about.

[Moloch]

The study does not say religious people are healthier, only that they self-report feeling healthier...

I bet religious people also self-report feeling happier... ignorance is bliss


Several studies have shown that prayer has zero effect... religious people are definitely not healthier than non-religious

[Mike Christ]

I can believe it; individuals with stronger ties with their community are healthier overall than stragglers, for two reasons: because we are social animals with a real need for human interaction, and because a financially connected community can better pay for the bills, e.g. similarly to how insurance works, except when it comes to religion they're often generous with their money towards other members of the religion (at least as far as Christianity goes.)  I'm always hearing about Christians helping other Christians through troubling times, more so than other groups of people.  Not to mention, less stress from individuals with clear support from a large community indicates a cleaner recovery from whatever is ailing the suffering party.

Religion is not necessary to achieve that, however, and non-spiritual individuals can experience the exact same effects by doing the exact same actions.  What I've noticed about atheists is that they tend to be socially disjointed, particularly noticeable in socialist dictatorships (which usually abhor religion.)  Void of this ability to become socially connected, they instead employ a form of national emulation of the community (after the national socialists destroy the real thing of course), i.e. everyone's family and helps each other (with the big difference between this and the real thing is the presence of guns and "or else"; literally just a shell of a society.)

I feel that ideology can do well to bridge the gap between the absence of religiosity/spirituality and the benefits which communal connectivity brings, since ideology is effectively the same as the glue which keeps religious people connected: it's a group of people who share a common set of beliefs, so it follows that these people will want to see each other thrive, and it follows that they will help their peers when they're not doing well.  It's just a shame that the notion of ideology has been tarnished by unstable and destructive people, even to this day.  I feel that the libertarianism is the most likely candidate for this success, also considering it has a very high presence of Christians, which gives atheists an opportunity at community with each other, and with the religious, due to sharing a common belief system which implies sharing--at least partially--common behaviors and preferences.

[xht]

People who have faith should not fear illness and death and if you believe that after you die you are going to a magical place where everything is perfect and you get a mansion, it probably makes you feel less afraid of death.

[Wilikon]

People who have faith should not fear illness and death and if you believe that after you die you are going to a magical place where everything is perfect and you get a mansion, it probably makes you feel less afraid of death.

Or it makes you less afraid of being alive.

[Slowturtleinc]

Wonder if this is due to religious/spiritual people having a more optimistic out look on life. As a pessimist I look around and see what happens to old people like me,they get cranky and snarly. Pushing all their loved ones away as they die with bitter fights over politics.

Think that this plays into it more than actually being religious but it would be interesting if they could figure that out.
If it was true,why are we programmed in that way if a God does not exsist?
Read a similar study in a psychology magazine and did not give it much weight then either.

[Moloch]

People who have faith should not fear illness and death and if you believe that after you die you are going to a magical place where everything is perfect and you get a mansion, it probably makes you feel less afraid of death.

Except they don't actually believe heaven is a better place... they know their faith is all make-believe pretend...

If a Christian really believed heaven was infinitely better than earth... they would have a death-wish... they would be begging people to kill them, or just commit suicide

The fact that Christians on their death-bed... struggle to hold onto what little life they have left... is evidence they don't actually believe they are going to a better place

If Christians truly believed God would cure their cancer... USA would not have so many hospitals (only Atheists would use a hospital)... Christians would all pray instead of taking medication or having surgery... it's all bullshit... they say it, but they don't actually believe it...

Christians, quite simply, want to be part of a group where they can claim moral superiority over "the other", without any sort of justification for this claim

[Wilikon]

Wonder if this is due to religious/spiritual people having a more optimistic out look on life. As a pessimist I look around and see what happens to old people like me,they get cranky and snarly. Pushing all their loved ones away as they die with bitter fights over politics.

Think that this plays into it more than actually being religious but it would be interesting if they could figure that out.
If it was true,why are we programmed in that way if a God does not exsist?
Read a similar study in a psychology magazine and did not give it much weight then either.

We are social creatures and can not live in a vacuum. Believing in something beyond your ego is hope. That is why we step out of bed every morning, to love someone or to troll someone on a forum.... We need a purpose.

[designerusa]

This is maybe what we call the Holistic approach. You start cleansing your mind and body. Eating the right food especially  the fresh ones, fruits,fresh vegetables etc. Also practice meditations to cleanse tour inner-self.

you are completely right.. if you are nourished well, you can get rid of lots of illnesses immediately .. and doing exercises has an important role on getting rid of some serious disases..

[Slowturtleinc]

Wonder if this is due to religious/spiritual people having a more optimistic out look on life. As a pessimist I look around and see what happens to old people like me,they get cranky and snarly. Pushing all their loved ones away as they die with bitter fights over politics.

Think that this plays into it more than actually being religious but it would be interesting if they could figure that out.
If it was true,why are we programmed in that way if a God does not exsist?
Read a similar study in a psychology magazine and did not give it much weight then either.

We are social creatures and can not live in a vacuum. Believing in something beyond your ego is hope. That is why we step out of bed every morning, to love someone or to troll someone on a forum.... We need a purpose.

I question the whole purpose of life angle,it feels like its one of those ideas created to create working ants or bees in a hive. The usual angle is people will give up on life and commit suicide if they do not find a purpose in life and find some kind of fulfillment.
What if its just another way to keep the cog going like the way the bible keeps people holding on for a afterlife!
Its always a interesting concept to bring up from time to time because very few people actually sit back and think about these issues. How many people do we know that are constantly pushing themselves and looking busy,this is why the cell phone is so handy for people. Put it to your face and you instantly look like you are achieving something instead of standing in one place doing nothing but pondering the clouds. Or watch people in a downtown core,most of them will have this rapid movement where they want you to believe they are off to a important meetup/event,when you catch up to them they are standing in line for a coffee.

If its something programmed into people through dna,then should we not be looking to alter it in experiments rather than giving in and pushing ourselves?
This falls into the same garble you get about trusting a married man more than a single man,you can rely on the married man to be punctual and never miss a shift. The single man does not have roots and can potentially uproot and find another job.

Also feels like a religious aspect because times where hard before we where around and people where actually surviving and just getting by. So they came up with religion to give people something to believe in and follow rules for. Fiefdom was important and the slaves/workers where critical to success.

Something to look into I think.

[Wilikon]

Wonder if this is due to religious/spiritual people having a more optimistic out look on life. As a pessimist I look around and see what happens to old people like me,they get cranky and snarly. Pushing all their loved ones away as they die with bitter fights over politics.

Think that this plays into it more than actually being religious but it would be interesting if they could figure that out.
If it was true,why are we programmed in that way if a God does not exsist?
Read a similar study in a psychology magazine and did not give it much weight then either.

We are social creatures and can not live in a vacuum. Believing in something beyond your ego is hope. That is why we step out of bed every morning, to love someone or to troll someone on a forum.... We need a purpose.

I question the whole purpose of life angle,it feels like its one of those ideas created to create working ants or bees in a hive. The usual angle is people will give up on life and commit suicide if they do not find a purpose in life and find some kind of fulfillment.
What if its just another way to keep the cog going like the way the bible keeps people holding on for a afterlife!
Its always a interesting concept to bring up from time to time because very few people actually sit back and think about these issues. How many people do we know that are constantly pushing themselves and looking busy,this is why the cell phone is so handy for people. Put it to your face and you instantly look like you are achieving something instead of standing in one place doing nothing but pondering the clouds. Or watch people in a downtown core,most of them will have this rapid movement where they want you to believe they are off to a important meetup/event,when you catch up to them they are standing in line for a coffee.

If its something programmed into people through dna,then should we not be looking to alter it in experiments rather than giving in and pushing ourselves?
This falls into the same garble you get about trusting a married man more than a single man,you can rely on the married man to be punctual and never miss a shift. The single man does not have roots and can potentially uproot and find another job.

Also feels like a religious aspect because times where hard before we where around and people where actually surviving and just getting by. So they came up with religion to give people something to believe in and follow rules for. Fiefdom was important and the slaves/workers where critical to success.

Something to look into I think.

Why don't you question the whole purpose of your heart beating every second... The heart started beating before man needed religion to make sense of life. The angle of life is to create more life. This not just a human social construct. The purpose of the bible is for you to become a Christian.
People commit suicide. I am sure there are some cases in the animal kingdom. Maybe. I don't know.

How big is your consciousness, what shape does it have and how much does it weigh? Is it your consciousness or is it rented? Maybe we should find a way to answer those questions before we believe it is time to reprogram our dna to make us better

 

[Slowturtleinc]

Wonder if this is due to religious/spiritual people having a more optimistic out look on life. As a pessimist I look around and see what happens to old people like me,they get cranky and snarly. Pushing all their loved ones away as they die with bitter fights over politics.

Think that this plays into it more than actually being religious but it would be interesting if they could figure that out.
If it was true,why are we programmed in that way if a God does not exsist?
Read a similar study in a psychology magazine and did not give it much weight then either.

We are social creatures and can not live in a vacuum. Believing in something beyond your ego is hope. That is why we step out of bed every morning, to love someone or to troll someone on a forum.... We need a purpose.

I question the whole purpose of life angle,it feels like its one of those ideas created to create working ants or bees in a hive. The usual angle is people will give up on life and commit suicide if they do not find a purpose in life and find some kind of fulfillment.
What if its just another way to keep the cog going like the way the bible keeps people holding on for a afterlife!
Its always a interesting concept to bring up from time to time because very few people actually sit back and think about these issues. How many people do we know that are constantly pushing themselves and looking busy,this is why the cell phone is so handy for people. Put it to your face and you instantly look like you are achieving something instead of standing in one place doing nothing but pondering the clouds. Or watch people in a downtown core,most of them will have this rapid movement where they want you to believe they are off to a important meetup/event,when you catch up to them they are standing in line for a coffee.

If its something programmed into people through dna,then should we not be looking to alter it in experiments rather than giving in and pushing ourselves?
This falls into the same garble you get about trusting a married man more than a single man,you can rely on the married man to be punctual and never miss a shift. The single man does not have roots and can potentially uproot and find another job.

Also feels like a religious aspect because times where hard before we where around and people where actually surviving and just getting by. So they came up with religion to give people something to believe in and follow rules for. Fiefdom was important and the slaves/workers where critical to success.

Something to look into I think.

Why don't you question the whole purpose of your heart beating every second... The heart started beating before man needed religion to make sense of life. The angle of life is to create more life. This not just a human social construct. The purpose of the bible is for you to become a Christian.
People commit suicide. I am sure there are some cases in the animal kingdom. Maybe. I don't know.

How big is your consciousness, what shape does it have and how much does it weigh? Is it your consciousness or is it rented? Maybe we should find a way to answer those questions before we believe it is time to reprogram our dna to make us better

 

Think I must have mislead you I am not religious in any aspect of my life. So the whole thinking about listening to the heart for meditative states does not resonate with me. Animals for sure commit suicide usually when they are hurt they leave the safety of numbers and get attacked by prey. Sure there are other examples we just have not captured that aspect,like beach whales but that could be a sonar issue.
If the purpose of life is to create life,then to what end? From what I have understood lately we really have little to go off for self. Perception is often wrong and that really is all we have,you factor in that study about decisions being made 1 second before we acknowledge it and it slides more to microbial push.
Watched this parasites life cycle where it latched on to different animals in the food chain and made them act in a way that was more attractive and easier to pick off by the prey. So humans most likely factor into that in some way.
But I do not believe in a after life,so if there is I am going to be shocked but if there is not I will most likely not know.

Had a random thought about life today and I was thinking what if we have our moral compass all wrong. What if pain and suffering where actually the way to go about life and we should torture every one we come across. Maybe that was the natural state and we have been fighting it and not letting it reach its full potential. Like our idea of heaven is actually hell and hell is heaven if that makes sense. We have these ideas in our head because we pass them along like telephone and it could be all wrong.
Then the light changed...

Guess I am bitter or something that I never became the battle rapper I wanted to be when I was 15 and the meaning of life is fruitless now that I can not be the next 2pac.