Healing Spirit: Power of prayer to restore health has following among scientists

Each Wednesday, more than 250 people attend the Blessing of the Sick service at the Solanus Casey Center on Detroit’s east side. They pray for the healing of themselves or people they love.

Recently, Katie Valenti, 28, was among the faithful who gathered at the center. In January, Valenti was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. She has had two surgeries and eight rounds of chemotherapy and will undergo radiation therapy in August.

Faith always has been important to the Valenti family, but the cancer has given them even more reason to pray.

There was a time when medicine and faith had clear borders. Doctors treated the physical body and religious leaders fed the spiritual body.

But thanks to a growing body of research and the increased presence of health practitioners whose faith is part of their practice, religion and medicine are joining forces in ways far beyond the hospital chaplain.

“There is a fair amount of science to substantiate the power of prayer, belief and spirituality to positively impact the healing process,” says Dr. Michael Seidman, medical director of the Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the Henry Ford Health System.

“It matters not what you believe. It matters that you believe.”

Seidman, who also is a surgeon, says that on occasion, with the family’s consent, he has prayed with his patients before surgery.

“I have asked if I may join in,” he says. “I’m there to reassure the family and to bond with them. It shows that I, too, have faith and it is important to me as well.

“It’s certainly not going to hurt, and if people believe it’ll help, that helps the healing process.”

Valenti, who attended the Detroit healing service with her mother, Karen Valenti, agrees.

“It gives you courage to fight,” she said. “There were some dark moments when I was first diagnosed and after my surgeries when I didn’t know if I’d make it through.

“My mom would say, ‘Send up all your fears and worries and discomforts and aches and say, “Today I can’t handle this, but I know you can.” ’ I did, and I felt better, and I got through the day. Now, I pray and thank God that I’m still here.”

A recent Wayne State University study found that if traumatic brain injury victims feel close to a higher power, it can help them rehabilitate. The study of 88 patients at the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan in Detroit was published in the February issue of Rehabilitation Psychology.

“Feeling connected to a higher power positively impacted not only their feelings, but their functional outcomes, what they were able to do,” says lead investigator Brigid Waldron-Perrine. “So they didn’t just feel better, there was evidence they functioned better in their ability to do daily tasks.”

The study used various questionnaires to assess patients’ spiritual practices and beliefs and their physical and psychological well-being. Researchers also interviewed the patients as well as significant others about how well the patient handled daily tasks, such as managing their own finances and going out in the community alone.

“Having a connection to a higher power was predictive of positive rehabilitation outcomes,” Waldron-Perrine says.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant allowed University of South Carolina researcher Jane Teas to interview 135 people who believed God had a role in healing them.

The study was published last year and resulted in a book titled “Faith Heals: Stories of God’s Love,” (SC McAC Press, $16.23).

“Our stories give testimony to a supreme presence and power of God; but not as passive, hidden in people’s souls or sitting aloof on a throne in heaven,” Teas writes in the book’s introduction. “God in these stories is active, transforming the ordinary wounds of sickness and adversity to well-being and joy, using visions, dreams and whispers heard in the heart.”

In an interview, she adds: “We’re not saying throw out your medicine. We are saying there is something powerful that goes with believing.

“I can’t say it’s not real. I can say there is a force in our world that we don’t know enough about to discount. I suppose one day we’ll have a nasal spray for the peace that surpasses all understanding.”

Not only is faith entering hospitals in varying ways, hospitals have entered houses of worship.

In 2009, the Henry Ford system piloted a project aimed at reducing health disparities within the African-American community. It put kiosks in four churches where parishioners can go for information and guidance on a variety of health concerns, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and HIV-AIDS.

The program was developed by Wilma Ruffin, manager of research programs for Henry Ford and a woman who said she owes her very existence to the power of prayer.

Relatives told her that when she was born, she was not breathing. A doctor pronounced her dead and covered her body.

An aunt, a grandmother and a midwife prayed for her, and she began breathing. Even so, doctors warned her parents that she would have brain damage. She did not.

“I’m a survivor from prayer,” says Ruffin, 60.

She says a growing number of churches have health ministries. Though their primary role used to be providing first aid to congregants, that’s expanding to include education, outreach and prayer for the sick.

Greg Jonesku, 67, of Novi, Mich., is in remission from two bouts with prostate cancer; he also has heart problems. He became more active in his church about five years ago

If nothing else, faith and prayer have improved his emotional health, he says.

“I have a better attitude,” Jonesku says. “I’m more relaxed, more peaceful. I don’t get upset as much as I used to.

“I think it came from realizing that I’m not in total control, but there is somebody out there who is in total control, and I want to be closer to that someone.”