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祈祷和止痛药一样有效 |
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Prayer effective as painkiller?
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY
This comes as no surprise to preachers and doctors who say they have
seen the way personal faith can influence a patient's reaction to
all kinds of pain, psychological or physical.
"Prayer enables you to take your mind and place it in a new
perspective," says family doctor Harold Betton, who also is pastor
of New Light Baptist Church in Little Rock. By focusing on prayer,
he says, believers reduce stress and gain control over pain.
He says he's not suggesting anyone should expect miracles, "but you
need to utilize what people have: their faith. Let your faith and
prayer intercede, and your perception of pain decreases."
Pain, in particular, is subjective and can be influenced by a
variety of factors that are difficult to assess by scientific
standards.
For some deeply religious people, pain can be redemptive, but faith
also can carry an extra burden.
The feeling is that "if Jesus endured it, I should be able to handle
it," she says. "So if I'm not able to handle the pain, there must be
something wrong with the spiritual connection I have with God."
But "it doesn't work that way," says Harold Koenig, professor of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. Faith and
medicine "work beautifully together. Just praying alone doesn't work
as well as if you're (also) taking your morphine."
Koenig and colleagues reported last month in the Journal of Nervous
and Mental Disease that among sickle cell patients, those who go to
church at least once a week had the lowest pain scores.
"People who are more involved with religious organizations seem to
be able to cope with stress," Koenig says.（原文）
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