In response to the growing public conversation at the intersection of spirituality and healthcare, The Atlantic ran an article a few days ago, “Should Your Doctor Pray With You?” . The subtitle was, “People in the hospital are usually in hard times. Nearly half would like their doctor to pray with them.”

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(model used for illustrative purposes only)

The article quotes James Tulsky, a palliative care specialist at Duke University,  as saying,

“Spiritual issues are central to patients’ experience of illness, particularly when they are really sick. To ignore spirituality is to ignore a central piece of what it means for many people to be a patient. I ask a simple question of all patients. ‘What role, if any, does faith or spirituality play in your life?’ I’ve asked it hundreds of times and have never gotten a negative response.”

Studies show that many or most patients do want this conversation to take place, and that it often doesn’t.

One of the world’s best known medical centers, Johns Hopkins, is an exception.

Quaker founder, Johns Hopkins, said in 1873, “It is my especial request that the influence of religion shall be felt in and impressed upon the whole management of the Hospital; but I desire, nevertheless, that the administration of the charity shall be undisturbed by sectarian influence, discipline or control.”

Adherence to the founder’s original intent may be a key part to the institution’s long term success. Their website reads,  ”Sensitivity to the patient’s spirituality has been a priority at Johns Hopkins since the hospital was founded in 1889.” 

Here’s another exception. Stanford University’s Hospital and Clinics offer the following as part of their “Spiritual Care Service”:

• Listening
• Open-hearted conversation about hope, gratitude, fear, connection and meaning
• A calm presence
• Prayers and blessings
• Connecting you to your faith tradition through our staff, volunteers and referrals to community resources

So maybe a broader and better question than, “Should your doctor pray with you?” would be something more like, “What role do you want spirituality to play during your stay in our hospital, and how can our staff help with that?”

The public’s growing awareness of the connection between spirituality and health may prompt more and more hospitals to offer spiritual care services similar to Duke’s, Stanford’s and Johns Hopkins’. This will be good news for me as a Christian Scientist, since spirituality has always been the major element in my own health care, and I know firsthand the vital role prayer and faith can play in healthy living and healing.

Now for some fun…not entirely unrelated. With all this talk of spirituality, do you wonder where you fit in? I did. And I found it interesting…and fun…to take the  What’s your spiritual type?  quiz on Beliefnet. As is often the case with multiple choice questions, the available answers may not always fit for you. But it’s fun to see where you fit on the scale. You might be surprised.

This article appeared on the following Patch Blogs: Clearwater, Dunedin, East Lake, Gulfport,Largo, Palm Harbor, Safety Harbor, and Tarpon Springs.

From a recent article in WebMD, individuals with delusional infestation tend to be hyper-aware of normal body sensations and interpret them as medical illness.  The article notes, “This stress has real physical effects on the body and leads to a spiral of worsening physical symptoms…”

The suggestion that thoughts and stress can be manifested as physical maladies may be counterintuitive to anatomy-based medicine, but research increasingly supports the idea.  For instance, The Washington Post reported, Nocebos[inert pills provided with a negative expectation] often cause a physical effect, but it’s not a physically produced effect,” said Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs who studies the ways that expectations influence what people experience.

The idea that the condition may be more mental than physical is unpopular among thosewho identify themselves with the disease. It has impelled them to fight on two fronts–working to gain credibility and help from the medical community and fighting the unfair stigma of mental illness.  With the significant setback of the CDC report, how many may be wondering, what next?

Last week at the gym, my wife noticed another woman vigorously working out with weights and fitness machines.  Given the level of her exertion, my wife asked why the exceptional effort.  She said she was working on her “virtual age”.  She had taken a physical examination that indicated she had achieved a virtual age ten years younger than her chronological age. She was very proud of this and wanted to maintain it. She believed it to be the result of keeping fit and working out at a level commensurate with her virtual age.  The measure of her success to her trainer or physician would be her physique.  The measure to my wife was her sense of dominion and drive, mental qualities.

February is National Senior Independence Month, and it goes without question that many “Seniors” are very active and work to keep themselves fit and independent.  Who wouldn’t work to keep themselves active and alert, exemplifying health and freedom from limitations associated with aging?  Sensible diet and exercise are norms today.

The Arizona retirement system provides a program called “Silver Sneakers”, which allows “Seniors” to belong to a gym without charge.  The State asserts that providing this benefit is a savings to health care costs.  Again, the focus may be on maintaining one’s physique but the impetus starts with the motivation to expand one’s life. Maybe it is driven in part by fear of aging and its various claims of decline and disease, but those that I encounter appear to be just as driven by friendships and a sense of community…a gathering youthfulness.

All of this coming together and exercising or engaging in other vigorous activity on the slopes or the bike trail, speak to the individual’s desire to maintain dominion over his or her life, which includes thought and body.  For me, these two things are really one…dominion over my thought results in dominion over my body.  Could the friend I speak of in the first paragraph be exhibiting a life ten years younger than chronological data, if she didn’t first have the thought of pursuing such a goal?  And would she maintain such a regimen if she didn’t find freedom, dominion, and a sense of joy increasing as a result?

If this kind of thought and action brings a change from chronological to virtual age, what kind of change would we begin to see in our life if we moved our thinking from virtual age to agelessness, to a more eternal sense of being.

Where could one begin?  Here is a thought from a book I turn to regularly for inspiration, Science and Health,by Mary Baker Eddy, which states, “Let us…shape our views of existence into loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather than into age and blight” (p.246).  This sentiment is not new, of course.  There are many Biblical examples of “Seniors” staying fit and expressing the continuity of life.  Abraham and Sarah began a family in their later years (Genesis 18).  Jesus proved life to be eternal and he stated his presence was for us to realize that we could have life more abundantly (John 10:10).

These thoughts, crack open the way to move from submitting to chronological age, to understanding that age is governed by our thought which, with right activity, can progress to virtual age, and ultimately to a realization that we can live a life of “freshness and continuity”, independent from age generally, and the decline with which it is associated.  Go virtual, and then go eternal.

The article further described that the CIM has opened an office in Phoenix, the Arizona Integrative Health Center, which approaches health with the patient at the focus of the practice, rather than the disease.  Then, there are several examples given of work being performed at the Mayo Clinic and by an individual psychiatrist in their respective practices using integrative medicine techniques successfully.  I find all of this encouraging, as it begins to recognize healing as involving a more complete understanding of the whole person as patient.  The examples given demonstrate that solutions emerged when either habits of thinking or acting were corrected, demonstrating the importance of thought on the body and its connection to healing.

One has to appreciate the courage, candor, and clarity shared by Drs. Bergstrom (Mayo), Hernandez (independent psychiatrist), and Rula (medical director of the CIM), as they push the frontiers of their professions into a more holistic frame.  In the article, among the varied healing strategies of patient centered, integrative medicine, there was a brief mention of spiritual well-being as part of the “whole”.  Given that among the stated purposes of the CIM are evidence-based and lower cost methods, spiritual well-being may be key to achieving those goals.

The spiritual basis of healing is perhaps the longest running method in the spectrum of integrative healing, actively utilized well before that term existed.  Not only can we find numerous accounts in Biblical history, especially after the establishment of Christianity, but there is ample evidence today of its efficacy.  My own experience includes healing of pain, viruses, malaria, and many other disorders all through spiritual prayer…prayer that is not wishful thinking or a function of the human brain, but a recognition of divine, loving consciousness, divine Mind, if you will, reflected in our individual thought and lives.  More than a remedy, the advantage of spiritual well-being, is that it includes a fulfilling sense of identity and health for all, without economic barriers.

I like the direction of The Arizona Republic article and hope that the “whole-body” concept continues to expand the role of spiritual well-being.  Perhaps we will learn that it is at the center of our health.  It certainly is for me.

Here’s another guest post from Southern California friend and colleague, Don Ingwerson. Enjoy!

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by Don Ingwerson

Article first published in the U-T San Diego.

Amid the nation-wide debate about health care and each person’s search for a safe, effective, and affordable approach is the realization that being healthy is an individual responsibility and personal endeavor.

A synopsis of an article in The Atlantic by Dr. David H. Freedman says, “the medical profession kept a cool distance from alternative medicine, which most doctors dismissed as the province of hippies and snake oil salesman.” But with health care a topic of debate at the moment, Congress, medical professionals, and the public are all weighing in on what should be included in health care. With the mandate for most everyone to have health insurance coverage in 2014 – or pay a penalty – health care options are being reanalyzed with reference to breadth of coverage and cost.

Deepak Chopra, author and founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California, speaks bluntly about the medicine he was taught and the kind he now practices. His experiences highlight the sometimes-strained relationship between conventional and alternative medical practitioners. When theNew England Journal of Medicine reported that Americans pay more annually for visits to alternative practitioners than to MDs, physicians expressed great concern. But there has been increased interest among a number of conventional medical professionals since National Institutes of Health studies reported that approximately 38 percent of the public is spending $34 billion dollars a year on alternative medicine out of their own pocket. Chopra makes the following very succinct statement about this issue: “No one could really object to the aims of alternative medicine, which are to bring relief to the whole patient. Sick people come to us in hopes that their suffering will end. If millions of them have been seeking holistic treatments instead of the two-pronged approach of conventional medicine – drugs and surgery – their motivation isn’t irrational.” Continue reading →

Which comes first, happiness…or health? Are we happy because we’re healthy, or healthy because we’re happy?

Claude Fischer, one of the leading pioneers of “Happiness Research”, tells us in his recent Boston Review article,

“The connection between reporting happiness and personal traits often runs both ways. For example, being healthy adds to happiness, and happy people also stay healthier.”

 Laura Kubzansky, associate professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health, is also at the forefront of happiness research. From last December’s HSPH newsletter:

 “In a 2007 study that followed more than 6,000 men and women aged 25 to 74 for 20 years, for example, she found that emotional vitality—a sense of enthusiasm, of hopefulness, of engagement in life, and the ability to face life’s stresses with emotional balance—appears to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. The protective effect was distinct and measurable, even when taking into account such wholesome behaviors as not smoking and regular exercise.” Continue reading →

On the night of our first official snow storm in Boston this past weekend, my husband and I ventured out to see the new film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the theater at the end of the film.

Set in 19th century France, the story is about redemption, love, law, revolution–and ultimately the saving grace of God. A timeless message as we enter 2013.

With the vast majority of the lines delivered in song and sung live by the actors, the lead character in Victor Hugo’s 1832 novel, Jean Valjean (played by Hugh Jackman) implores:

“God on high, hear my prayer, in my need you have always been there…Bring him home, bring him home.”

It’s perhaps one of the most moving lines in musical theater songbooks. Continue reading →