Patients who use religion or spirituality to cope with the chronic pain of rheumatoid arthritis can reduce their pain and boost their sense of well being, preliminary.

The report found that patients who felt a desire to be closer to God, felt touched by the beauty of creation or reported other daily spiritual experiences were more likely to be in a good mood and to have social support.

Individuals who used religion as a key coping strategy for their pain reported much higher levels of

• emotional
• social
• disease-related support
  

One might expect that people coping with chronic illness or chronic pain might find it difficult to maintain a positive outlook or feel connected to God or the beauty of life.

The results of this study suggest otherwise.

Persons who reported being able to control and decrease pain using positive religious and spiritual coping strategies were less likely to experience joint pain and more likely to experience positive mood and higher levels of social support.

In addition, these patients used positive religious and spiritual strategies for coping with their disease more much more frequently than they used negative religious and spiritual coping strategies, for example "God is punishing me for my sins,".

The authors stress that the types of spiritual experiences patients reported using in their diaries were not "unusual phenomena, such as seeing visions or having out of body experiences, but rather spiritual experiences that ordinary people have in the context of daily life."

The study suggests that understanding the daily spiritual and religious experiences of patients is important in key to understanding their experience of their disease.

Journal of Pain. April, 2001;2:101-110

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Spiritual resources are the highest level of healing, so it is not surprising to find this observation. However it is encouraging to see it documented by traditional researchers. Prayer is a profound healing tool. Journaling is a simple way to capture much of the benefit of prayer. The healing in journaling actually comes from the process, not in reviewing it at a later date. Many may have fears of writing everything they would like to for fear of someone reading it. If that were the case it would be best to burn or destroy the paper afterwards or delete the file if typing it. I have been journaling for the last 15 years and have found it to be an enormously valuable resource. I wrote my journal for the first ten years but I have been using a program called "Daily Journal" from Parson's Software for the last five years. I can type much faster and clearer than I can write, so it works well for me. If you are interested in the strong connection between spiritual health and physical health, you can browse through the many articles listed on our Prayer/Faith/Religion index page. You may also want to check out the web site of the The National Institute for Healthcare Research, a privately funded, nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to advancing the understanding of the connection between spirituality and health. Related Articles: Physicians' Protocol For Using Antibiotics in Rheumatic Disease Religion and Depression <