Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the debut episode of the Christian Clinician Podcast. I'm your host, Tanya Painter, and I am really excited to be recording this first episode with you. I wanted to share a little bit about why I'm starting the Christian Clinician podcast. And the main topic around this podcast is how our faith impacts our health. Over the last few years, I've really started diving deep into this topic and looking at some of the research that we have behind how faith can play a role in our chronic illnesses and more importantly, our recovery from them. And what I found is that faith in medicine are not mutually exclusive. And in fact, they work together for the benefit of our mental, emotional, and physical health. There is a ton of research out there.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:00:44]:
We have literally thousands of research studies showing the impact that regular faith practices, regular spiritual practices, and our role that religion can play in our day to day lives. The impact that those can have on our chronic health, on our health outcomes, are over overall well being and just generally how we feel. We can't be at our healthiest selves when we're neglecting our true selves, and that is our spiritual self. We are creatures of spirit. We were made in God's image, and we are meant to be in a relationship with him. And if we're not, if we're not practicing that, if we're not following that, and if we're not pursuing that relationship with him, there's a piece missing. And that equates to mental and emotional issues as well as physical health issues. And it all starts to manifest.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:01:31]:
We need to be bringing in that spiritual aspect to our health as a whole person so that we can really, truly enjoy the health that we were meant to have. So how does this idea fit into medicine and what we know about our physical and emotional health? So that's really what we're going to be exploring on this podcast. So I'd like to share with you a little bit about. I'm going to nerd out a little bit here for you and share a little bit about what I've learned over the past few years on a topic called neurotheology and also some of the studies on faith in our health outcomes. So, first of all, let's talk about neurotheology and what that is. There's actually a fairly new field of science, fairly small, but it's called neurotheology. And it's basically the science of how religion, religious activities, and spiritual practices impacts our physical brains and impacts our. And when I say physical brains, obviously, I mean our actual brains, not our emotional health or anything like that.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:02:28]:
It's how it actually changes our brain chemistry, how it changes and impacts our thoughts, and how that translates into differences in our health outcomes, including our stress levels, our cortisol levels, our blood pressure and cardiovascular outcomes, cancer outcomes, immune autoimmune diseases. I mean, the research that we have out there is amazing. And so I just wanted to share a couple of studies handpicked over the last couple of decades that have really kind of bring, bring attention to this issue that we're not actually addressing this. And this is a major missed opportunity for us in the healthcare field, both as clinicians but also as patients. I mean, this is something that we can even be doing on our own. We don't necessarily have to include our physicians or our practitioners in this piece of our health, but if we're doing these practices at home, then we can actually go a long way towards that relationship building with God and really filling in the gap of our physical and emotional health when we bring in that spiritual peace. So let's take a look at some of the research that we have, and I will have links to all of these that I refer to in the show notes. So you can go look them up yourself if you'd like to.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:03:44]:
The first one is a study from 2008, and it is titled Chronic Pain and Fatigue, associations with religion and spirituality. So if we skip down to the results, you can read, if you're really interested in how they did it and what they were specifically studying, you can definitely read that yourself. But really, what I want to focus in on with these studies is just the results, the conclusions that they came to with these studies. So this one in particular said religious people were less likely to have chronic pain and fatigue, while those who were spiritual but not affiliated with regular worship attendance were more likely to have those conditions, chronic pain and fatigue. So then there is another study that was done in 2023 called religion and survival among european older adults. And the conclusion there says both frequency of prayer and religious participation exhibited a significant positive dose response relationship, although the results for religious participation were more profound, basically saying that both prayer and religion religious activities had a positive response in the health outcome of these european adults. A study from 2002 called religious attendance and cause of death over 31 years. They concluded that the results from this study are consistent with the view that religious involvement is a general protective factor that promotes health through a variety of causal pathways.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:05:06]:
Further study is needed to determine whether the independent effects of religion are mediated by psychological states or other unknown factors. So this one is basically saying that if people are involved in a religious practice, that it has a protective factor and promotes general good health, and there are multiple ways that it can do this. Yet another study from 2010, the relationship between religion and cardiovascular outcomes and all cause mortality in the women's Health initiative observational study. So, this was a study that was done over almost 100,000 women and over a period of almost eight years. And what they found is that after controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and prior health variables, the self report of religious affiliation and frequent religious service attendance, they were associated with reduced risk of all cause mortality. So, meaning that across the board, all causes of death reduced. They were not having as high a death rate as people that were not attending religious services. And I have one more for you, in case you're getting bored and starting to tune out.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:06:13]:
From 2016, the association of Religious Service attendance with mortality among women. And the conclusion here said that frequent attendance at religious services was associated with significantly lower risk of all cause cardiovascular and cancer mortality. Death among women. Religion and spirituality may be underappreciated resource that physicians could explore with their patients as appropriate. And this isn't the only study that has that recommendation that religious and spiritual. Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource. There are multiple studies that are actually calling for us to start looking at incorporating religion and spirituality as part of an overall comprehensive healthcare plan. So these are.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:06:57]:
And these are just a handful in the last couple of decades. There are some. There are some newer, there are some a lot older. But generally speaking, across the board, we see very positive outcomes when we are incorporating a healthy religious or spiritual practice within. And it looks like there is kind of a hierarchy. Spiritual practice, just a general spiritual practice, is better than no spiritual practice. But religious spiritual practices, as in being a part of a religion, identifying as a Christian or a Muslim or whatever, has better outcomes than just general spiritual practices. And so we can kind of see that as we kind of get into a deeper and deeper purpose of relationship with God, that we see more intense effects as a result of that.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:07:46]:
But there's a flip side to this coin. And as in any research, you can always find something that will negate a different study, right? So there are definitely studies out there that show the opposite is true, that there's a potential for increased anxiety, increased high blood pressure, increased mortality from cardiovascular events in some populations. So what gives? Why are there some studies that say the opposite of what all these other studies are saying? I think it's important for us to explore that and kind of take a look at what could be some of the problems with some of the different studies? In some of them, the quality of the study was not, it was not done well. It was not a good study. So we do need to take a look at that. There are a handful of them compared to the hundreds of other positive studies and showing the positive outcome. So we have to look at the bulk of what the research is showing. The majority of them are saying that this is a beneficial thing, but there are a few outliers that say no.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:08:42]:
Actually, we found the opposite is true. So we want to take the bulk of that information and understand, since the majority of studies are showing it's beneficial, then probably there's something that is not quite right or off with the studies that are showing the negative. That being said, there's always the potential that somebody is discovering something that we have not yet taken into consideration. And I studied some of these negative findings to try to figure out what might be causing those negative findings. And there were a few things that popped up for me, so I'll lay them out here. One is that the area that the study was conducted in, there are some very, very high, strict religious locations throughout the United States and the world. And depending on where the population that these people were studying from, there can be intense pressure around religious practices, expectations within the church, those kinds of things that can actually cause increased anxiety and stress outcomes in those subpopulations. And so there definitely can be ways that we practice our religion and spirituality that is not beneficial, that is actually harmful to our health.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:09:49]:
And we'll talk about that here more in a minute. We want to take a look at who are these people that are being recruited for these studies, and are they a part of this greater, more intense expectations within that religious population? And then we can look at the type of religious practices that make a difference even within Christianity. So perhaps you've been taught that you have to work to achieve salvation, and that's really stressful for you. And you feel like if you're not doing enough, that you're not going to go to heaven. That can be very stressful from a religious standpoint. And anytime we have increased stress, we have increased cortisol, which increases cardiovascular problems, blood sugar issues, all kinds of health concerns. So we need to take a look at what are the beliefs of the people within the religions that we're studying. Do you believe that God is a God of punishment, and if you disobey him in any way, that you're a bad person and that you're going to hell? If those are the types of expectations that you've been taught, then that's going to increase your stress around religious situations.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:10:49]:
Do you hold on to guilt because you didn't do the right thing according to your teachings or according to scripture or whatever? If you're holding on to that guilt and you're self flagellating all the time, if you're not able to forgive yourself, then yes, religious practices and spirituality from that sense can increase our anxiety and depression and other things. So we need to take a look at the context within the different religions that we're studying to fully understand that there are in fact, some religious practices that are not helpful, they are not beneficial. And we want to explore some of those in this podcast as well. We want to understand what are some of these not health conducive beliefs that are out there. And there are a lot of them, whether it's within Christianity or outside of Christianity. Really, the question comes down to our relationship with Jesus. So we can argue that there are multiple paths to healing and health through God. Meaning there are multiple religions that can improve our health.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:11:49]:
After all, most of the research that we have is not focused only on Christianity, but on any religious practice. So while we can look at the research that any religion can improve our earthly life through health outcomes, there's actually only one way to eternal life, and that's through Jesus Christ. So let's just sit with that for a minute. What do you think about the idea that we can enjoy health in our physical bodies from multiple different types of religions, different spiritual practices, even new age practices? That there are multiple religious approaches that we can gain for our health, but that there is only one path to eternal life. And so it's really important that we make the right decision on which pathway we're taking, because one will have earthly effects in the life that we're living now, and one will have effects echoing through eternity. So these are the topics that we're going to be diving into in this podcast. We're going to be checking the Bible to see what it has to say about our health, our beliefs, and most importantly, our relationship with God. We'll be looking at the research to see what science is uncovering about this quote unquote secret weapon to health.
Dr. Tanya Paynter [00:12:53]:
We'll be talking with practitioners and patients to discover how they use their faith to overcome their own health issues. And we'll be speaking with pastors to dive deeper into truth scripture and to get a better understanding of what we believe and why, which is really the base of what we need to get to. What do we believe? Why do we believe it? What's the evidence we have for what we believe? So I'd like to invite you to subscribe to the Christian Clinician. Join me on this exploration of health, faith and science. Until next time.
