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The Cost of Neglecting Spirituality

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The Cost of Neglecting Spirituality

What if the most overlooked factor in your health isn’t what you eat or how you exercise, but what you believe?

Over two years ago, Dr. Vipin Mudegowder, currently a resident in pulmonary and critical care medicine, struggled to navigate the demanding internship duties working in the intensive care unit (ICU). Witnessing trauma and the fragility of life had begun to take a toll on his health; he found it hard to lift himself out of depressive thoughts. That’s when he decided to embrace a spiritual routine. He began meditating for a few minutes every day and hasn’t stopped since. The simple lifestyle change has helped him reclaim his well-being, he says.

He has come a long way from being an anxious and depressed intern to an optimistic, caring, full-time doctor assisting in the emergency room (ER).

Mounting studies find spirituality to be associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, better mental health, longevity, and more. However, the general culture of “neglected spirituality” has led many of us to find the connection between spirituality and health hard to believe.

In any case, almost everyone—whether a believer, agnostic, or atheist—tends to probe the realm of spirituality when things go really wrong with their health, says Dr. Kyle Gillett, a dual board-certified physician in family and obesity medicine.

All factors, whether physical or metaphysical, become personal when someone starts looking for answers to their own health problems.

Here are the benefits you might miss by neglecting spirituality.

Religious Services Tied to Longevity

Participation in weekly church services provides a “protective effect against risk of death that is comparable in scope to the harmful effect of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day—about seven years,” according to a review published in the Review of Religious Research.

A meta-analysis study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found an association between religious attendance and longer life, noting that the real-world, practical significance of attending religious services regularly is comparable to drugs like statins, which are widely used to lower the risk of heart disease.

“Religious attendance may be more cost-effective than statins,” the author wrote.

Further, a longitudinal study showed an association between religious practice and a decreased risk of coronary heart disease. Over a three-decade follow-up, the participants demonstrated a 32 percent reduced risk of death due to heart disease as compared to the agnostic group, despite the prevalence of high-risk factors like low socioeconomic status and diabetes.
A 2008 analysis of the data from a previous study involving nearly 93,000 women participants found that regular religious service attendance was associated with a 20 percent reduced risk of death.

Prayer and Meditation Influence Brain Health

In 2024, a research team analyzed the association between prayer and mental well-being in the United States. The study examined how various dimensions of prayer correlate with different indicators, such as happiness, depression, anxiety, a sense of control, purpose, and dignity. It found that positive emotions experienced during prayer and praying with others are associated with greater overall mental health. In contrast, negative emotions experienced during prayer were linked with raised levels of depression and anxiety.

Gillett said the studies on prayer show that it does appear to lead to an objective improvement in physical health. “There is certainly something to it. We don’t necessarily know why, but even medical science is publishing more and more clinical literature on the benefits of faith and prayer.”

Spiritual practices like meditation can lead to significant structural differences in brain tissue. Compared to the meditation-naïve control group, meditators were found to have a significantly thicker cortex in the anterior regions of the brain, which are important for cognitive and emotional processing. The study suggested that these structural differences could be associated with the repeated practice of attentional and emotional regulation during meditation.
Mindfulness has also been shown to lower anxiety, but generally, it’s unknown how it compares to standard first-line treatments. A 2022 randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry sought to study the effect of mindfulness compared to escitalopram, a commonly used psychopharmacological treatment for anxiety disorders. The study concluded that mindfulness practice is as effective as antidepressant escitalopram.
Another study showed that increasing the frequency of daily spiritual experiences may help preserve neurocognitive performance in people exposed to greater physiological and psychological stress.

Religious Beliefs Lower Inflammation

Inflammation is a natural protective response of the immune system toward infectious agents; however, if it lingers on for long, it is not a good sign. C-reactive protein (CRP) is one of several markers of inflammation, and raised CRP levels are associated with an increased risk of multiple health issues like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, stroke, and age-related macular degeneration, including higher risk of psychological distress and depression.

A 2024 study on middle-aged and older adults in the United States investigated the connection between spirituality and inflammatory, cognitive, and physical health; it associated “higher religious beliefs and values” with up to 6.5 percent lower CRP levels.

How to Train Your Spiritual Muscles

For beginners who are wondering how to start working on their spiritual fitness without feeling overwhelmed, Mudegowder and Gillett recommend starting gradually to build and train one’s “spiritual muscles.”

Mudegowder said spirituality isn’t just about being a religious believer; it is more about what your inner world looks like. According to him, to embark on the path of true spirituality, one should first start cultivating a compassionate bearing: being kind to others and yourself. He encourages engaging in random acts of kindness. A compassionate person can even win the hearts of people who don’t care about virtue, Mudegowder said, while rudeness can push away even those who share the same faith.

Gillett said developing spiritual fitness requires a progressive overload strategy similar to bench-press training. Gradually increase the load and repetitions to build stamina and muscles, as lifting weights beyond your capacity won’t help you grow. The key is to choose a “spiritual load” that you can overcome but still makes you somewhat uncomfortable so that you keep pushing yourself. For instance, rather than jump-starting a long meditation session, start meditating for a few minutes a day; let your capacity for meditation grow gradually.

Gillett emphasized that total health reflects the harmony of the body, mind, and soul and that you can’t treat one without treating the other. Every individual is unique, and doctors, hand in hand with their patients, should custom-design health plans that don’t shy away from an individual’s spiritual needs.

He usually asks his patients the following questions to get to know their inner thoughts:

  • What’s your purpose in life?
  • What have you, your family, or friends done to set goals or New Year’s resolutions that go beyond the physical realm?
  • What types of faith or belief systems do you have?

Depending on the response, he directs the individual to what may be best for them—without imposing any particular belief system. He recommends setting time for regular intervals—creating rhythms—for certain health-oriented spiritual activities, such as meditation. Developing a habit is the key.

He said to start with spending a significant amount of quality time, at least once a year, writing down your life purpose and life goal, what reasonable steps you have taken to achieve them, and what steps you can take to improve.

“Think of it as a quality improvement and quality assessment project,“ he said. ”You can call it metaphysical health if you‘d rather do that. You can call it spiritual health if you’d rather do that—whichever term you like better.”

Then, have monthly meet-ups with your people—your social group—and share your thoughts and doubts, ask hard questions, see where you are falling short, and ask how to overcome your challenges.

Spiritual and religious dimensions have already been associated with increased psychological and physical health, including higher levels of life satisfaction. Maybe it is time to slow down, take a moment to reflect on your life situation, and see what meaningful change you can make to optimize your well-being.

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