SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hallelujah! Attending church regularly can increase your life span, say researchers at the University of California-Berkeley.
People who attend religious services once a week have significantly lower risks of death compared with those who attended less frequently or don't go to church, according to a study that will be published in the April 4 edition of the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine.
"I see it as if I had a choice to hang with the church choir or hang with the Grateful Dead, which group will be better for your health?" said William Strawbridge, co-author of the study and senior research scientist of the human population laboratory at the Public Health Institute.
Strawbridge, along with others in the Public Health Institute, the California Department of Health Services and the University of California-Berkeley, found that people who infrequently or never attend religious services have a 66 percent greater risk of dying from respiratory diseases and are twice as likely to die from digestive disease.
The reason, according to Strawbridge, may be that many devout churchgoers don't drink, smoke or overeat. And if they start out as smokers, they are more apt to quit. He added that attending church also makes people more apt to marry, which is generally good for the health.
"People may be happier and more adjusted," said the Rev. Carl Engstrom, from the First Presbyterian Church of Newark. "They also may be more at peace to better deal with the tension associated with life in the Bay Area."
Although the study looked at Alameda County (Calif.) residents, researchers said it could be relevant to all of the United States. The study examined data over a 31-year period for 6,545 adult residents in the county. Participants were questioned in 1965, 1974, 1983 and 1994.
Most of the participants were Christian: 51.9 percent were Protestant and 27 percent were Roman Catholic. But 2.5 percent of participants were Jewish and 8 percent were other religions; 10.6 percent had no affiliation.
Doug Oman, the lead author of the study and a lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley's School of Public Health, speculated that people who attend church may have "more inner peace" and less stress.
Thomas Plante, the chair of the psychology department at Santa Clara University, said, "For the most part, preliminary results are positive. People who find the need to engage in religious activities will, because they want to, and find it's good for the soul and good for others, with health benefits as icing on the cake."
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