" How Faih Can Heal "

First task: pick an article, read it and comment it. Here it is the summary:



The Biology of Belief, by Jeffrey Kluger

The paritable lobe is the responsible for processing sensory input, the part of the brain that works when we pray or meditate.
Those prayers are mostly for health and we hope that those prayers can actually heal us.
New discoveries affirm that faith can bring health: believers can even live longer (two or three years), heal faster and control better their diseases. All because our body and brain are completely compatible.
While praying or meditating, our brain works in a specific way, mostly our paritable and frontal lobe, creating a sense of not knowing what it is being said by the person. For people who practice this sort of activities can trigger permanent changes in their brain, mainly concerning memory: those with 15 or more years of practice, memory improves a lot. Even during fasting, because of the privation of calories, our entire body suffers changes that give us full clarity, sense of peace, even if biologically harmful.
Prayer is, in fact, considered by believers intimately related to health. Since 2000, scientists and theologians have been studying these cases - there are more than 6000 studies published since that year. Actually, there were already theories in 1872, by Francis Galton.
Showing the possible connection between prayer and health, in 1988, a study by the cardiologist Randolph Byrd of San Francisco General Hospital shows that patients with heart conditions fared better when prayed for, but in 2005, a study in Harvard by cardiologist Herbert Benson showed the opposite: « complications occurred in 52% of heart-bypass patients who receive intercessory prayer and 51% of those who didn't ».
Some even believe that prayer works just like the placebo effect: believing in something triggers bodily changes - if you give someone a sugar pill, the pain may actually go away. Just as that, knowing that someone is praying for you will probably help you.
So, the belief in God should be even more powerful than the belief in a pill. To try to prove this theory, some began to study the health of churchgoers and some show that mortality can be related to our faith. That can be explained by the support people get from church and it followers or by the fact that religious people believe in a meaning of life.
The African-American churches have been connecting faith and health more than any other and, in the 1990's, was created the North Carolina Black Churches United for Better Health, an association with 50 churches, helping 2500 parishioners by preaching health in sermons or serving healthier foods at community events. Quickly it became a national organization with the collaboration of cancer associations, always trying to improve health and reduce obesity levels among people.
Now, many scientists and theologians are willing to create a system where medical and pastoral care are provided as one. However, hospitals are still reluctant to accept, though both doctors and patients don't mind having religious conversations but just don't know how the other would react.
Most specialist advice a dialogue centered in the patient and psychologist Jean Kristeller developed a guide based on this advice for doctors who want to discuss religious questions with cancer patients and 90% felt comfortable with that.
In New York City, there's an organization - the HealthCare Chaplaincy - of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Zen Budhist board certified chaplains that gives a total package of treatment in more than a dozen hospitals and clinics. Their job is not only with believers, but with any others who want to talk.
This group is becoming national and breaking the barriers of the city. More and more, other alternatives are being searched, and what matters the most is their result.

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My faith is not religious or any of that sort. After growing up in a Christian environment by my own choice, I decided o leave that world when my critical sense increased.
Besides that, I think this article goes beyond religion and its effects. It's about what we believe - it could be magic, fate, whatever - and what effect that has in our lives and even body.
In an era of technology and science, it is difficult to believe in such thing, but at least ii is confortable knowing we can have some power.