8 Ways Faith Can Heal

Here are 8 ways faith can heal.

1. Faith provides social support.

Not surprisingly, a major reason why regular churchgoers have half the risk of dying over the next eight years as people who skip religious services is due to the social support gained by a church community. One consistent happiness key is weaving a network of support for yourself. We all need a security net. If you go to church regularly, and especially if you get involved in your parish or church community, that social support is provided. Also, regular churchgoers are more likely to GIVE support to others, and this act of generosity--any altruistic activity, really--promotes better health.

2. Faith engages the senses.

I never thought about it this way until reading the quote by Ted Kaptchuk, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School . He says, "Religious belief is not just a mind question but involves the commitment of one's body as well. The sensory organs, tastes, smells, sounds, music, the architecture of religious buildings [are involved]."

He's so right. That's why, when I'm in a bad place, I often go sit in an empty church and find comfort there, looking at the stained-glass windows, the sapphire ceiling with stars, the wooden stations of the cross, and the statues of the saints. I will light a few votive candles, for all my intentions, and also for those whose intentions got accidentally blown out last Sunday by my kids. This sensory experience is also why I'm brought to tears at Christmas time when I hear a beautiful version of "O Holy Night."

3. Faith reinforces a belief system.

Did you know that you're happier and healthier when you think that you're right (regardless of whether or not you really are).

Think about the last fight you had with your family. If you and your sister "won" it (your brother got down on his knees ... "I was so very wrong"), you know that primal feeling of superiority that I'm talking about: the one that apes experience, and insecure people like myself. But the apes and immature folks are merely confirming a theory that positive psychologists have known for a long time: that people bond when they hold common opinions and beliefs, and this kind of bonding leads to happiness. It's like a positive gossip session.

Church is all about this kind of bonding. You believe that God sent his only son so that we might have life and have it more abundantly? ME TOO! Get out!

4. Faith provides good laws to live by.

Religion and spirituality do what a parent or supervisor at work does: give you 10 laws to abide by. And, although you may stick out your tongue at those regulations and try to break a few of them, you are actually glad that they exist, because, for the most part, your life runs more smoothly when you follow them. These expectations, or dogmas, keep you on track. In an interview with Beliefnet, Dr. Harold Koenig, co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University Medical Center said this:

Some of the things we'd like to get rid of in religion--the dogma, the laws--may be the ingredients that result in better health. You should have only one spouse, you shouldn't cheat on your spouse, you shouldn't get involved in Internet pornography--all that's forbidden. We learned that if people get involved in doing those things they risk their health. Whether it's a sin in a spiritual sense or not, it's bad for them. So these rules and regulations and laws--love your neighbor and help your neighbor and give your neighbor--are good for us.

5. Faith attaches meaning to events.

Here's how scripture benefits my health: it offers me plenty of examples of how some very bad situations (think Job) were redeemed in the end, and that all the suffering actually had a purpose, that there was some greater good that came out of it. I cling to that very message on my darker days. I have to trust that my night won't last forever, that there will always be a light in the distance, and that God will carry me there if I get too weak to walk.

My faith gives me hope.

And hope, doctors say, is about the best thing you can do for your body. It's better than a placebo.

6. Faith inspires gratitude.

Doctors have always said the optimists fare better in surgery and combating any type of illness than pessimists. Gratitude, like humor, boosts your immune system, make you more resilient to stress, counters depression and anxiety, and helps to lower your production of cortisol, the hormone that is bad news all around.

Faith motivates gratitude in that it reminds a person to count her blessings and to thank God often for them. Spirituality and religion also encourage a broader perspective of the world--of global needs--and in doing so foster a deeper appreciation of our circumstances.

7. Faith encourages fasting.

Most religious traditions incorporate some cleansing fast as a ritual: Catholics have Lent, Jews have Yom Kippur, Muslims have Ramadan, and so forth. Fasting has spiritual benefits, of course--some believers can achieve a temporary state of clarity and peace by abstaining from certain foods or limiting their caloric intake--but the physiological impact is profound, as well, because these fasts are a way for the body to purge toxins.

8. Faith changes the brain.

Engaging in prayer and meditation can actually change your brain.

Long-term meditators--those with 15 years of practice or more--appear to have thicker frontal lobes than nonmeditators. People who describe themselves as highly spiritual tend to exhibit an asymmetry in the thalamus--a feature that other people can develop after just eight weeks of training in meditation skills.

Government Scientists Are Consulting But Unable to Stop BP Oil Spill

In what is measuring up to be the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history, the government is nearly helpless to stop the oil flowing from the Deepwater Horizon well that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.The White House said Sunday that it expects the spill to grow by 20 percent after BP gets started with its latest effort to contain the spill, beginning Monday or Tuesday. The White House also said it is tripling its environmental cleanup crew.

But the additional spillage is opposite what BP Managing Director Bob Dudley said on "Fox News Sunday" -- that the decision to cut open the pipes in order to put a cap on the well will likely not add to the amount of oil flowing into the water.

"What we need is a clean cut across the top of that riser package at the bottom of the sea. The amount of oil will not change. The oil was coming out anyway from just above it at a broken area of the pipe at the end of the pipe. So that is not going to change the flow," he said.

President Obama's top environmental adviser Carol Browner said Sunday the government is responding with what she called the largest environmental mobilization effort ever, but it looks like it could be up to BP to dig a new well before the gushing spill stops pouring into the Gulf of Mexico.There's not just one being dug, there are two. Because we insisted -- the government insisted that there be a second one in case something went wrong with the first one," Browner said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

That's after BP's "top kill" effort to plug the hole with hundreds of thousands of pounds of mud failed. BP is looking at the next alternative -- trying to grab the oil that's spilling into the water and move it onto a vessel that will pull the oil onshore.

"Obviously that's not the preferred scenario. We always knew that the relief well was the permanent way to close this, to get it killed so there wasn't oil coming up while the relief well was being drilled was the second option. Now we move to the third option which is to contain it," Browner said.

The federal government has placed 150 scientists on the case, and concerns have been raised to BP about putting additional pressure on the leaking well that could make the spill worse.

The government estimates that 12,000-19,000 barrels of oil are being released daily from 5,000 feet below the sea. Estimates are at about 18 million to 40 million gallons have been dumped into the Gulf since the explosion.

Dudley said after the last containment dome failed because ice crystals formed in the pipe, scientists learned to pump warm sea water down the column of the pipe to prevent the same kind of problems while trying to get the oil up into the vessel.

Dudley said he was hopeful the odds of success are greater than the 60 to 70 percent odds put on the top kill method.

"We feel like the percentages are better that we'll be able to contain the oil. The question is how much of the oil we'll be able to contain, and the objective is to try to collect the majority of it through this vessel," he said.David Vitter and other lawmakers and state officials have complained that not enough booms have been put up to shield Louisiana's shores, where 150 miles of coastline are already affected. He said he is very dissatisfied with the administration's response.

"The state and locals came up with a plan on emergency dredging barrier islands well over two weeks ago. For over two weeks, the corps and other federal agencies dragged their feet. 9:16:49 Then, they approved moving forward with 2 percent of that plan," he told CNN.

Vitter said the disaster has not turned him against offshore drilling -- that would be like saying he's opposed to air travel after a plane crash. More importantly, Vitter said, the key is to finding out what went wrong and making sure it doesn't happen again.

To that extent the Republican senator is on the same page as the administration, though Vitter and Browner part ways on stopping deep water drilling until that investigation is complete, a situation Browner acknowledged only compounds economic troubles for the region and the country.

"In the Arctic they've been shut down. In the Gulf of Mexico they've been shut down, including 33 rigs that were out there drilling right now, which we understand is going to be hard on those people," she said. "We have to learn from this accident. In the interim we have shut down all deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until we have an answer to, one, how can you make sure that these operations are safe, that there are redundancies in place? ... Secondly, what happens when those redundancies don't work?"

In the meantime, the nation's top environmental advocate acknowledged that the devastation is beyond any scope the U.S. has ever seen.

"More oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico than as any other time in our history. It means there's more and more -- more oil than the Exxon Valdez," she said.