Health Assessment

Prayer is more than just repetition and physiological responses, says Harold Koenig, MD, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at Duke, senior author of the Handbook of Religion and Health, a new release that documents nearly 1,200 studies done on the effects of prayer on health.

Studies show that religious people tend to live healthier lives. "They're less likely to smoke, to drink, to drink and drive," he says. In fact, people who pray tend to get sick less often, as separate studies conducted at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show. Some statistics from these studies:

·Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly.

·Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.

·Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.

·In Israel, religious people had a 40% lower death rate from cardiovascular disease and cancer.