An Attitude Change in Some MD's

The following article was sent to me by Dr. Raymond and I thought it intriguing enough to send it along to all of you.  To me, it shows that the field of health care is expanding in thought and deed.  I like this very much.

Belief Relief: Imagine That?

Patri­cia L Ray­mond MD FACP FACG

Med­ical per­son­nel find it hard to believe in treat­ments that don’t empha­size med­ica­tion diet or exer­cise.  We have a hard time with pre­scrip­tions for the unseen.  After all, what would be the dosage, or the mil­ligram strength?  And what might the side effects be?  How might you treat an overdose?

 Albert Ein­stein, one of the most noted thinkers of this cen­tury, reminds us that “Not every­thing that can be counted counts, and not every­thing that counts can be counted.” In other words, we in med­i­cine need to get over ourselves.

 In over two decades of research on spir­i­tu­al­ity and health, 84% of the stud­ies were asso­ci­ated with a clin­i­cal ben­e­fit to the par­tic­i­pants.  Over 60 med­ical schools now have the spir­i­tu­al­ity pro­gram in their med­ical train­ing.  Here are five dif­fer­ent spir­i­tu­al­ity pre­scrip­tions that you should dis­pense to your patients.

• Think about it,
• Write it down,
• Pass it around,
• Get on your knees,
• Smile

 Think about it

Every­one says “Don’t just sit there, do some­thing,"  when it should be “Don’t just do some­thing, sit there!” Stud­ies on med­i­ta­tion have shown effect in dis­eases as var­ied as pso­ri­a­sis, heart dis­ease, and chronic pain syn­dromes.  At UCLA Med­ical Cen­ter, med­i­ta­tion tapes when pre­sented to patients with hyper­ten­sion yielded a 73% reduc­tion in med­ica­tion with 50% of the patients being able to stop med­ica­tions altogether.

 Write it down

Jour­nal­ing has been found to have a strong influ­ence on patient’s health.  A study by Smith in the Annals of Inter­nal Med­i­cine revealed pos­i­tive results that lasted long after the study was com­pleted in patients with emphy­sema and rheuma­toid arthri­tis.  In this study, the patients were instructed to jour­nal for fif­teen min­utes a day about their con­cerns and fears about their dis­ease.  The pos­i­tive effects of jour­nal­ing were doc­u­mented on both pul­monary func­tion tests and on blinded eval­u­a­tion by a rheuma­tol­o­gist, respectively.

 Pass it around

Altru­ism has the abil­ity to make you healthy. In a study done by the­ Uni­ver­si­tyof Michi­gan, 1200 retirees were eval­u­ated.  1/3 of these retirees donated time to char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions or activ­i­ties.   Those who donated 40 hours per year to a sin­gle cause were 40% more likely to be alive at the end of the eight year study.  How­ever, if they par­tic­i­pated in sev­eral projects, which totaled up to 40 hours, they saw no such ben­e­fits.  Thus, be altru­is­tic, but be ded­i­cated to a cause.

 Get on your knees

Did you hear the joke about the dyslec­tic agnos­tic insomniac?

He would lay awake at night won­der­ing whether there was a dog.

Don’t won­der any longer.  Wor­ship does help pro­long your lives.  A study done at Duke Uni­ver­sity revealed that peo­ple aged over 64 who attended to church weekly were 46% less likely to die than irreg­u­lar atten­dees over the six year study. It has also been found that patients who lack social par­tic­i­pa­tion or reli­gious strength are at a higher rate of com­pli­ca­tions and death post car­diac surgery.  Blood pres­sure, lung dis­ease  and heart dis­ease have all been found to be inversely related to par­tic­i­pa­tion in reli­gious activ­i­ties.  Even more amaz­ing are the stud­ies on dis­tance prayer which show that peo­ple of var­i­ous reli­gions pray­ing for you with­out your knowl­edge can have an impact on your well being.

Smile

You must embrace the world.  Stud­ies at the Mayo Clinic indi­cated that pes­simists had increased risk fac­tors for pre­ma­ture death, lower over­all level of health, more use of med­ical resources, and higher med­ical costs.  An amaz­ing fact from Inter­nal Med­i­cine News indi­cated that pes­simism wors­ened pul­monary func­tion tests, with pes­simism show­ing the equiv­a­lent to a twenty pack year smok­ing history!

 Choose the Pollyanna pre­scrip­tion.  Find some­thing good in every bad event.

Now, if we could just get more than 60 medical schools to teach this, I believe there would be a much better chance to reduce the astronomical costs of health care in this country.  However, I must admit that I am skeptical that busy medical doctors will, as a whole, adopt this emotionally-based approach to patient care.

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