Many studies over the past two decades have suggested that religious people are healthier. But a new study shows that when it comes to heart disease and blocked arteries, attending religious services or being spiritual won't protect you.
The study suggests that these practices add little extra protection, says Dr Donald Lloyd-Jones of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who led the study, published in the journal Circulation.
Matthew Feinstein, a medical student who proposed the research, reviewed data from 5,500 people who were part of a larger study, expecting to see that religious people had a lower risk of heart disease.
The authors defined religiousness as religious practices such as prayer, meditation and spirituality, regardless of denomination. They did not record the participants' religious beliefs.
Over four years, the people studied had 152 heart or artery events, including 9 deaths, 42 heart attacks and 24 strokes. The rate of such events, less than 1% a year, was lower than in the general population, because people who already had heart disease were excluded.
But neither the rate of heart disease nor a number of risk factors, such as high cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure, differed between people who were more or less religious or spiritual. The only exceptions: those who attended services, prayed, meditated or were spiritual were more likely to be obese and less likely to smoke.
Given that many religions forbid smoking, the finding on tobacco was easy to explain, Lloyd-Jones said, and it agrees with earlier studies. The reasons for the obesity finding, which matches some earlier studies but not others, are less clear. "We're not sure whether religious people are more likely to gain weight through their activities, or whether heavier people turn to religion because of stigma," he said.
Dr Harold Koenig, professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who has studied the possible link between health and religion and wasn't involved in the study, said the obesity finding was no surprise, as congregations and families often gather around meals.
He said the research was good but had several limitations that make its meaning unclear. The low rate of heart attacks and other events, for example, could be a weakness, because with small numbers it is hard to rule things out. He also pointed out that half the people studied were African American or Hispanic, groups that on average have less access to health care than the white and Asian Americans who made up the rest of the sample. African Americans are also among the most religious people in the world, he said. "With a sample like this, struggling and under stress, religion would have to overcome a huge number of risk factors to have a big effect."
Lloyd-Jones agreed that the study "is not the last word, but it's very interesting". Heart disease is "very complex", he added: "It doesn't come from a single source. Each of us brings our own mix of genes and environment."
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