2019

As the new year begins, it’s an opportunity for all of us to look back on what’s happened to us - health wise - in the past year and what might be expected in the coming year.

It’s unusual when you have COPD.

Happy and healthy New Year?

Folks will wish each other a “Happy and healthy New Year.”

It’s a nice sentiment.

But, it’s also a bit difficult to consider when you know you’re going to be less-than-healthy every day of 2019.

I don’t mean to sound depressing. Just the opposite.

Once you’ve come to grips with the disease, you’re able to sort matters out for yourself a little more clearly.

Faith, spirituality, prayer

One of the things that gets me through almost all of this is faith, spirituality, prayer - whatever way you’d like to refer to it.

I’m not saying you need any of that. And I’m certainly not saying one form of spirituality is better than the other.

But I do.

And - for me- it helps incredibly.

Studies on spirituality

Science has begun to study the positive effect and healing characteristics spirituality can have on illness.

Organizations as prestigious and scientific as The National Institute of Health (NIH) have begun researching this.

The NIH solicited RFP’s (Request for Proposals) to study what they refer to as “Frontier Medicine.”¹

The NIH defines Frontier Medicine as “those practices for which there is no plausible biomedical explanation. Examples include bioelectromagnetic therapy, biofield/energy healing, homeopathy and therapeutic prayer/spiritual healing.”¹

They go on to say that “...despite the fact that these therapies are used extensively by the U.S. public, there are very little high-quality data available to elucidate or demonstrate the safety, efficacy, effectiveness and/or mechanisms underlying these approaches.”¹

But in the past few years, there have been over 4,000 clinical and academic studies concerning prayer, religion, spirituality, and health according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine at the National Institute of Health.²

Improved health outcomes?

For instance, the McGuire Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center and the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, both located in Richmond, Virginia recently conducted a review of recent literature (or studies) and asked, “Does religious activity improve health outcomes?”³

The researchers began with the observation that “many Americans use religious activity to cope with stressful life events” and they wanted to search and review recent medical literature to measure the role of religion in health outcomes.³

They identified studies published in the English language between January 1999 and June 2003 describing the effect of religion on health outcomes.³

The researchers found five controlled trials, four clinical trials, and seven faith-based partnerships that describe the impact of a religious intervention on health outcomes.³

They found that “prayer may improve success rates of in vitro fertilization, decrease the length of hospital stay and duration of fever in septic patients, increase immune function, improve rheumatoid arthritis, and reduce anxiety. Frequent attendance at religious services likely improves health behaviors. Moreover, prayer may decrease adverse outcomes in patients with cardiac disease.”³

The study came to the conclusion that, “Religious activity may improve health outcomes.”³

All the best for 2019

And so, I’d like to wish all the best 2019 you can possibly imagine. I saw this on a banner recently
INHALE-courage
EXHALE- fear