The Healing Power of Faith: How Belief and Prayer Can Help You Triumph Over Disease

An infirm, lifetime alcoholic suddenly becomes sober and strong. A patient undergoing open-heart surgery amazes the doctors with a speedy convalescence. A cancer patient given only a few months to live defies the predictions. What accounts for such remarkable recoveries? Is it miracle or medicine?

In this extraordinary book, Dr. Harold G. Koenig presents groundbreaking scientific evidence that provides answers to these puzzling medical mysteries. You will read about the pioneering study that found nonreligious patients with heart disease to be three times more likely to die following surgery than their religious counterparts. You'll learn why saying prayers regularly can be as effective as taking medicine, and why prayer and medicine together are such a potent combination.

Here you will meet the unforgettable patients who taught the doctors so much as they triumph over life-threatening disease, heartbreaking marital problems, dangerous addiction, and more. With simple, practical methods for harnessing the power of faith, this potentially lifesaving book provides an astonishing and immensely effective strategy for healing.

What is the connection between religious belief and health? Does that connection have to be taken on faith, or is there scientific proof? Harold Koenig, M.D., author of The Healing Power of Faith, has devoted his career to examining scientifically the healing powers of religious belief. He directs Duke University's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health, the first research facility in the world to study how religious faith affects believers' physical and emotional health. This center's research has led to more than 70 data-based, peer-reviewed papers published in medical and scientific journals. Some of the findings include:

• People with strong faith who suffer from physical illness have significantly better health outcomes than less religious people.
• People who attend religious services regularly have stronger immune systems and lower stress than their less religious counterparts.
• Religious faith seems to protect the elderly from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
• Religious patients recover from hip fractures and open-heart surgeries better than nonreligious patients.

The Healing Power of Faith is inspiring and far from dry, filled with many absorbing case studies that show how people suffering from alcoholism, depression, anxiety, polio, drug addiction, heart disease, and many other medical problems manage to turn their lives and health around through religious belief. --Joan Price