Churchgoers May Live Longer

Source: NY times
By: NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Date: 12 June 2016

Going to church may lower the risk for premature death, a new study suggests.

Researchers used data from a long-term study of 75,534 women that tracked their health and lifestyle, including their attendance at religious services, over 16 years through 2012. The report is in JAMA Internal Medicine.

After controlling for more than two dozen factors, they found that compared with those who never went to church, going more than once a week was associated with a 33 percent lower risk for death from any cause, attending once a week with a 26 percent lower risk, and going less than once a week a 13 percent lowered risk. Risks for mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer followed a similar pattern.

The researchers statistically eliminated the possibility of reverse causation — that is, that healthy people go to church more than unhealthy ones. And they found that some variables, such as social support and a tendency not to smoke, contributed to the effect. But no matter how they analyzed the data, the effect of church attendance alone seemed to have benefits.

“This suggests that there is something powerful about the communal religious experience,” said the senior author, Tyler J. VanderWeele, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard. “These are systems of thought and practice shaped over millennia, and they are powerful.”

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