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DOCTOR BETWEEN FAITH and PRAYER

Ellen Steinbaum

Other doctors had seen it without questioning. But Harold Koenig, MD, was curious. As a young doctor, he had noticed many hospitalized patients praying or reading the Bible. He asked them why.

"Rather than struggling and analyzing and focusing on the problem, many people told me they had turned the problem over to God and that they felt a peace and relaxation because they didn't have to struggle with it:' says Dr. Koening, now assistant professor of psychiatry and internal medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and director of the University's Program on Religion, Aging and Health.

As a family physician, Dr. Koenig had always been interested in people's emotional reactions to their physical health and the factors that helped patients avoid becoming depressed. He decided to investigate what benefit religion might have.

Finding almost nothing in the general medical literature on the subject, Dr. Koenig began his own research in the mid.' 80s into whether religion, spiritual belief or prayer could be effective in helping people deal with illness. What he found over the past decade through dozens of studies (his own and others') was consistent evidence that spirituality does, in fact, make a difference. No matter which area of the country or which type of population was studied, the findings have consistently indicated that faith can help people-especially those with chronic illness-feel better both psychologically and physically.
"The data," says Dr. Koening," speaks for itself."

A former competitive swimmer, a mountain climber who has scaled some of the world's highest peaks and a college boxer, Dr. Koenig has had first hand experience with chronic illness through his own struggles with psoriatic arthritis. He says there are days now when he can barely make it to his mailbox. "During my medical training I couldn't hold a pen to write notes in the patients' charts."

Taking the cue from his patients and his research findings, Dr. Koenig now carves time out every day for his own spiritual sustenance. "I set aside time for meditation and prayer” and perhaps reading inspirational literature. It tends to give me comfort, especially during times when I have a lot of stress to deal with."
BELIEF, A POWERFUL FORCE

Turning to prayer for help with illness is an idea that, to some, may sound out of touch with the late 20th century. Centuries ago the roots of medical science were interwoven with religion. Priests, shamans, and holy men and holy women were the early healers of illness. Only in the past 400 or 500 years- mere blink in the long stretch of human history- ­have we considered medicine and religion unrelated. It seems more than a coincidence, though, that we joke about doctors seeing themselves- or being seen by their patients- as gods.

Even as the age of medical science entered the modern era, the recognition remained that belief is a powerful force. Nearly a century ago, William Osler, MD, perhaps the most respected physician of his day, wrote of his conviction that faith heals. "Faith in the gods or in the saints cures one [person]:' he wrote.” Faith in little pills another, hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a common doctor a fourth"-

There are cultures that have never abandoned the idea that the health of the body is linked to the health of the soul. Native American healer and writer Jamie Sams of Santa Fe, N.M., explains that the health of each individual is an integral part of the spiritual existence of his community.

That prayer and spirituality can give comfort may not surprise you. That they can help bodies heal might. But this is what evidence suggests.

"When someone is ill we have ceremonies called sweat ­lodge or purification-lodge ceremonies," he says. "We put the person in the center of the circle and pray. Every single person is committed to the well-being of the person who is ill. If it takes 36 hours without food or sleep, we stay until we feel the energy moving. In the Seneca tradition, we never use the word 'prayer; we use the word 'praise'. By being grateful for the healing, we make the space for it to come in and actually occur”

Though sweat-lodge ceremonies may sound dramatic, turning to faith for help with illness is something people of all religions and backgrounds do in varying and in individual ways. Some seek the communal support and structure of an organized religion. Others may never enter a house of worship but feel connected to a higher power through their own personal belief or private prayer.

The common denominator is the experience of connecting oneself to something beyond, of "communicating with the transcendent", in the words of Larry Dossey, MD, who chairs the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine's Panel on Mind/Body Interventions. Dr. Dossey has written a book on the phenomenon of prayer and healing called Healing Words (Harper Collins, 1993).

The Rev. John Carroll, a priest and certified chaplain at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, says he often visits people in the hospital who say to him, "I'm not really a spiritual person." He responds, "Do you think you're a good person? If you are, then you are a spiritual person."

"We often get spirituality confused with organized religion or with the governmental structures within religion, but it is really about God," he says. "Whatever the denomination, the common element is that God is there for all of us."

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