Study - Prayer Works
Scientists don't know why or how it works. But an increasing
number of studies suggest what people have known intuitively
for thousands of years: prayer does work.
One well-known study found that coronary patients at San
Francisco General Hospital who were prayed for did better
than those who were not prayed for.
The prayed-for patients required fewer antibiotics and
were less likely to develop certain complications than the
unprayed-for group.
One doctor said of the coronary study, "Maybe we doctors
ought to be writing on our order sheets, 'Pray three
times a day.' If it works, it works."
Another study, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, examined
how patients' own prayers affected their recovery from
open-heart surgery.
This 1995 study found that patients who said they drew
comfort and strength from religious faith, which presumably
included prayer, were three times more likely to survive
in the six months following surgery as "nonreligious" patients.
Some people are skeptical of studies like these, believing
that people's expectations of getting well influence
the results.
Consequently, many studies have been done on animals and
plants, who theoretically are unable to influence the results.
These studies, which all used control groups that were
not prayed for, have found that mice, seeds and even mold
and red blood cells could be healed or protected by prayer.
(See Healing Words by Larry Dossey.)
The studies show how powerful the mind can be and suggest
that prayer works. They demonstrate a principle you may have
already discovered for yourself—you can use prayer
to create spiritual and material changes in your life.
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