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Deepen Your Spiritual Connection

In cancer care, being spiritual can have a powerful positive effect on your outcome. Researchers with the Washington University School of Medicine have found that ovarian cancer patients had less stress and depression plus lower levels of certain factors related to tumor growth.

Religious and spiritual values are important to patients coping with cancer.

Source: The website of the National Cancer Institute

Spiritual and religious well-being may help improve health and quality of life in the following ways.

Decrease anxiety, depression, anger, and discomfort.
Decrease the sense of isolation (feeling alone) and the risk of suicide.
Decrease alcohol and drug abuse.
Lower blood pressure and the risk of heart disease.
Help the patient adjust to the effects of cancer and its treatment.
Increase the ability to enjoy life during cancer treatment.
Give a feeling of personal growth as a result of living with cancer.
Increase positive feelings, including:
- Hope and optimism.
- Freedom from regret.
- Satisfaction with life.
- A sense of inner peace.
Spiritual and religious well-being may also help a patient live longer.

Spiritual distress may also affect health.
Spiritual distress may make it harder for patients to cope with cancer and cancer treatment. Health care providers may encourage patients to meet with experienced spiritual or religious leaders to help deal with their spiritual issues. This may improve their health, quality of life, and ability to cope.

Finding Comfort in Spirituality

Source: National Comprehensive Cancer Network

Spiritual practices that may help you cope with your cancer and its treatments include:

Praying alone or with someone else
Having someone else pray for you
Meditation
Meditative breathing
Reading scripture or other holy works
Saying one passage from your religious tradition over and over again like a mantra
Using the language of your religion, such as Hebrew, Arabic, or Latin, in your prayers
Listening to classical or spiritual music
Yoga
Talking about spiritual matters with another

During times of pain and discomfort, during treatments, or when you feel alone, these and other practices can help take you mentally to another place where you feel whole, connected, and at peace.

Studies

This study reported the following results: A total of 2,638 patients treated at 37 palliative care units from January 2017 to September 2018 were analyzed. The median survival time was 18.0 days in Japan, 23.0 days in Korea, and 15.0 days in Taiwan. Spiritual well-being was a significant factor correlated with survival in Taiwan while it was insignificant in Japan and Korea.

Significance of results: Spiritual well-being on admission was associated with survival in patients with advanced cancer in Taiwan but not Japan or Korea. The findings suggest the possibility of a positive relationship between spiritual care and survival time in patients with far advanced cancer.

This study says: A meta-analysis of data from 42 independent samples examining the association of a measure of religious involvement and all-cause mortality is reported. Religious involvement was significantly associated with lower mortality (odds ratio = 1.29; 95% confidence interval: 1.20-1.39), indicating that people high in religious involvement were more likely to be alive at follow-up than people lower in religious involvement.

In this study, data were drawn from 101 unique samples encompassing over 32,000 patients. The study concluded:
Results of the current meta-analysis suggest that greater religion/spirituality is associated with better patient-reported physical health.

This study says Spiritual issues play a prominent role for patients with cancer. Studies have demonstrated a positive connection between a patient’s spirituality and health outcomes, including quality of life, depression and anxiety, hopefulness, and the ability to cope with illness.

This study says:
Spirituality is a personal search for meaning and purpose in life, which may or may not be related to religion. It entails connection to self-chosen and or religious beliefs, values, and practices that give meaning to life, thereby inspiring and motivating individuals to achieve their optimal being. This connection brings faith, hope, peace, and empowerment. The results are joy, forgiveness of oneself and others, awareness and acceptance of hardship and mortality, a heightened sense of physical and emotional well-being, and the ability to transcend beyond the infirmities of existence .

This study says:
Studies have indicated a significant relationship between spirituality and quality of life. Having a strong sense of spirituality helps patients adjust to and cope with illness.

Cancer patients report their spirituality helps them find hope, gratitude, and positivity in their cancer experience, and that their spirituality is a source of strength that helps them cope, find meaning in their lives, and make sense of the cancer experience as they recover from treatment. Spiritual well-being has been associated with lower levels of distress and greater quality of life across life expectancy prognoses. Spirituality can therefore be a resource of strength for patients.

See more at www.RadicalRemission.com.

(Source: Wiley.com)

“A Meta-Analytic Approach to Examining the Correlation between Religion/Spirituality and Mental Health in Cancer.”

Research reveals that most individuals with cancer have religious and spiritual beliefs, or derive comfort from religious and spiritual experiences. But what impact does this have on patients’ health? Recent analyses of all published studies on the topic—which included more than 44,000 patients—shed new light on the associations of religion and spirituality with cancer patients’ mental, social, and physical well-being. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the analyses indicate that religion and spirituality have significant associations with patients’ health, but there was wide variability among studies regarding how different dimensions of religion and spirituality relate to different aspects of health.

In the first analysis, investigators focused on physical health. Patients reporting greater overall religiousness and spirituality also reported better physical health, greater ability to perform their usual daily tasks, and fewer physical symptoms of cancer and treatment. “These relationships were particularly strong in patients who experienced greater emotional aspects of religion and spirituality, including a sense of meaning and purpose in life as well as a connection to a source larger than oneself,” said lead author Heather Jim, PhD, of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Dr. Jim noted that patients who reported greater cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality, such as the ability to integrate the cancer into their religious or spiritual beliefs, also reported better physical health; however, physical health was not related to behavioral aspects of religion and spiritualty, such as church attendance, prayer, or meditation.

In the second analysis, the researchers examined patients’ mental health. The team discovered that the emotional aspects of religion and spirituality were more strongly associated with positive mental health than behavioral or cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality. “Spiritual well-being was, unsurprisingly, associated with less anxiety, depression, or distress,” said lead author John Salsman, PhD, who conducted the research while at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, but is now at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem. “Also, greater levels of spiritual distress and a sense of disconnectedness with God or a religious community was associated with greater psychological distress or poorer emotional well-being.”

The third analysis pertained to social health, or patients’ capacity to retain social roles and relationships in the face of illness. Religion and spirituality, as well as each of its dimensions, had modest but reliable links with social health. “When we took a closer look, we found that patients with stronger spiritual well-being, more benign images of God (such as perceptions of a benevolent rather than an angry or distant God), or stronger beliefs (such as convictions that a personal God can be called upon for assistance) reported better social health,” said lead author Allen Sherman, PhD, of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. “In contrast, those who struggled with their faith fared more poorly.”

Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds

Kelly Turner, PhD, a researcher who specializes in integrative oncology, studied one hundred cancer survivors and analysed over one thousand cases of people who experienced a “radical remission” from “incurable” cancer. She found that these people did not sit around waiting for a miracle, but made significant changes in their lives. Dr Kelley found ten healing factors common among all of the cases she studied. These ten key factors are:

Radically changing your diet
Taking control of your health
Following your intuition
Using herbs and supplements
Releasing suppressed emotions
Increasing positive emotions
Embracing social support
Deepening your spiritual connection
Having strong reasons for living
Daily Physical Exercise

Cancer Survival Tips

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Deepen Your Spiritual Connection