Religion and Health

Growing up in a church, I found this chapter to be interesting. I feel like sometimes people think that “if you are religious, you will live a long life”.  I think that it might make sense since people who are religious tend to have long live because they have a more positive attitude. Also, as the book mentions, more religious people tend to not smoke or drink although I think this might be less true now than it was when the Terman subjects were early adults. It says in this chapter and says that “women who are very religious tended to be very friendly”. People who are involved in church tend to have a strong support system and be surrounded by others who care.  It is interesting the findings between religion and health for men, it did not matter whether they were religious or not. However, for women, they were more likely to live longer if they were religious. The chapter mentions that “the most important characteristics, especially for women for religion and longevity is the link between social networks and community engagement.

I think this chapter highlights the difficulty in trying to sort out the various factors that lead to longevity.  In particular, it is difficult to sort out what relationships are simply correlations vs causations. So far this book has considered various personality traits, careers, education, happiness of parents’ marriage, stability of one’s own marriage, exercise and now religion and how these might impact one’s health.  As we have seen, many of these factors are interrelated. I find it interesting to consider the effect of all of these on one’s life and will be particularly interested to see what advice the authors might have in the end.