‘Prayer Is Considered a Form of Medicine': Dr. Kat Lindley

Prayer ‘releases control to something greater than oneself,’ which can reduce the stress of needing to be in charge, said the doctor.

A woman holds her hands to her chest in prayer during a tent ministry in Bakersfield, Calif., on March 12, 2023. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

The simple act of prayer has numerous tangible health benefits, and it is considered “a form of medicine,” which works to regulate bodily functions through lowering stress and developing a capacity to maintain a sense of peace, according to Dr. Kat Lindley.

“Prayer can calm your nervous system, shutting down your fight or flight response,” Dr. Lindley, president of the NGO Global Health Project, said in a Sept. 29 X post. “It can make you less reactive to negative emotions and less angry. Prayer elicits a relaxation response, which lowers blood pressure and other factors heightened by stress. It also releases control to something greater than oneself through secondary control, which can reduce the stress of needing to be in charge.”

Dr. Lindley was writing the post in the context of Johan Sebastian Bach’s music and how the maestro’s music always glorified the divine. The doctor pointed to Bach’s music compositions, which regularly ended with “Soli Deo Gloria” (Glory to God alone) and a call in the beginning—“Lord help.”

Prayer is an effective stress management mechanism as it improves testosterone release and “related androgen hormones such as DHEA,” said the doctor.

Made by the adrenal glands, a lower level of Dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA is associated with memory loss, heart disease, and breast cancer. The hormones typically peak at around age 25 and then steadily decline as the individual gets older. DHEA also helps in the reduction of abdominal fat, osteoporosis, and improves insulin resistance and mental well-being while reducing arterial inflammation and stiffness.

When a person intently and consistently prays, blood flow to the frontal lobes and anterior cingulate increases, resulting in a tempering of emotions, said Dr. Lindley. This assists in making more reasonable responses. “There is definitely skepticism out there about the healing power of prayer, but at the end of the day, when your soul needs respite, few words may make a difference.”

Dr. Lindley is also the director of Global COVID Summit, an international alliance of doctors and scientists.

She added that praying increases the release of dopamine. “Dopamine plays important roles in executive function, motor control, motivation, arousal, reinforcement, and reward through signaling cascades that are exerted via binding to dopaminergic receptors at the projections found in the substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, and arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus of the human brain.”

However, the number of Americans who pray on a regular basis has been in decline.

According to a 2021 survey by Pew Research, 45 percent of Americans said that they prayed on a daily basis, down from 58 percent in 2007. The percentage of people who said they “seldom/never” pray rose from 18 percent to 32 percent during this period.

While 67 percent of Protestants said they prayed on a daily basis, this number dropped to 51 percent among Catholics. Among those who identified with “no religion,” 13 percent said they prayed daily.

Is Praying Really Helpful?

Although Dr. Lindley points to the actual benefits of praying, many researchers do not share the same enthusiasm for the activity,

A 2006 study, referenced by mainstream media involving over 1,800 participants, concluded that intercessory prayer did not help with medically-ill patients.

The study looked at patients recovering from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery in six U.S. hospitals and found that “intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.”

However, multiple other studies have found prayer to result in beneficial outcomes.

A Sept. 2018 study looked into the impact of religious involvement among adolescents, which included religious service attendance, prayer, or meditation.

“Compared with never praying or meditating, at least daily practice was associated with greater positive affect, emotional processing, and emotional expression; greater volunteering, greater sense of mission, and more forgiveness; lower likelihoods of drug use, early sexual initiation, STIs, and abnormal Pap test results; and fewer lifetime sexual partners,” the study found.

“It was also possibly associated with greater life satisfaction and self-esteem, greater likelihood of being registered to vote, fewer depressive symptoms, and a lower risk of cigarette smoking.”

Praying or meditation was linked to a sense of mission among those who practiced it regularly. Such people were also keen on volunteering and being socially involved. Praying or meditating one to six times per week was found to be related to fewer symptoms of depression and greater emotional expression.

A 2011 study conducted experiments to test whether praying for others reduced anger and aggression among people who were provoked. It suggested that “religious practices can promote cooperation among non-kin or in situations in which reciprocity is highly unlikely.”

In one experiment, participants were initially insulted by a stranger. Praying was later found to have reduced the participants’ anger. “Following an insult, prayer reduced anger and actual aggressive behavior,” said the study.

The researchers admitted that more research was needed to “pinpoint the exact mechanism whereby prayer may reduce anger and aggression,” but the present work indicates that “prayer was found to have pervasive effects on the emotional experience, social behavior, and cognitive appraisals of praying individuals.

“Whenever people are confronting their own anger and tendencies to aggress, they might consider the age-old advice of praying for one’s enemies. Even when such prayers do not directly benefit those enemies, prayer may still help people coexist more peacefully.”

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.