Stuff You Should Know - How Prayer Healing Works

Episode Date: October 30, 2008

Studies have shown that prayer has a positive effect on individuals, but can your prayer heal someone else? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to find out how science weighs in on the power of intercessory prayer -- and if it should at all. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Hard radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. This podcast is brought to you by GoToMyPC, providing fast, easy, and secure access to your PC from any web browser. Access emails, files, programs, and network resources from home, the road, or anywhere there's an internet connection. Setup takes just minutes. Try it free. Visit

GoToMyPC.com slash Stuff. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. That's Chuck Bryant, Josh Clark, not Brian. I'm Josh. Right. We've got some listener mail claiming that Josh is Brian. Not true. At least they got the spelling of your last name almost correct. Without the T, they, they, I think they use the Y generally. Brian. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So it's not Chuck and Brian. It's Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark. Bryant. That's what I said. Sure. Lighten up. That's, that's neither here nor there. No, it's not. What is here and what is there is intercessory prayer. Wow. That's a leap. I like it though. Do you like that segue? It's like a bowl in a china shop. Let's go, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So Chuck, I don't know how you feel

about this, but there, there have been studies on prayer, right? Sure. And actually people who pray, who pray for themselves, for others, but who spend a significant amount of time praying. You could also call it meditating. Sure. They actually lead healthier lives. Did you know this? I did. I read your article. Okay. A lot of good info on that. Right. Let me ask you this, because this is something that I was aware of before I wrote this article. And it was really interesting to, to, to see how it's been studied. But I was aware that people have been studying it, but to find, you know, what the methodologies were like and what the results were. Exactly. I mean, were you aware that prayer healed? Is that something that you would have accepted

before you read this article or? Well, you know, I grew up in the church, in the Christian church, and anyone who's, who's grown up in church or has been to church like that knows that prayer is very central. It's the personal conversation that you have with God. Right. And so, yeah, you're taught from early on that prayer makes a big, big difference. Right. And it actually does have a physiological difference. Right. Is that taught as well, or is this just a happy byproduct? No. In my church, it wasn't at least. They just said that's how you get results. I got you. Okay. Well, speaking of results, there have been studies that have evaluated people, examined people who pray a lot, and they tend to have lower blood pressure. They have, they live

longer. Their heart rate is generally slower. Right. They're a little more laid back physiologically than someone who doesn't pray. And there's been some explanations for it. Well, yeah, I know one that I think makes a big difference is many people who are in fact religious probably tend to lead healthier, cleaner lifestyles, issue things like alcohol and smoking and other things that can avoid prostitutes. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that might have a lot to do with it personally. It definitely does, but we're not the only ones who thought of that. Other people have as well and explained it away with that. So, there's been follow-up studies that took all those factors into account, and they still found that people who pray tend to be healthier. True.

My theory is that you're meditating. When you pray, you're meditating. You're entering a meditative state. A transcendental state, a meditative state. So, you're just more relaxed. Right. I think if you do that enough times, your body learns to relax. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what I think. Okay, so there's not a lot of people who are, I guess, debating whether or not prayer has an effect on the person who's praying. What is really contentious is whether or not praying can have an effect on anyone else or anything else in the universe. Right. And this is where we get into the real sticky discussion. It is sticky. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. I know growing up, as I said, in the Christian faith, they would often tell us if a family member,

a distant family member of anyone in the church were sick, they would call upon the church to pray for them. Where do they call those things? Prayer lists, sir? Prayer shout-outs. I don't remember. I don't remember to be honest, but they would prayer requests for people to keep them in their hearts and minds. Sure, yeah. And you could actually call in and leave a voicemail and then you get added to the list, right? No, I don't know anything about that. I'm pretty sure I've seen phone numbers like prayer hotlines. Oh, okay. I kid you not. No, I believe it. Okay, so you've got this congregation praying for this person. Do you have any anecdotal evidence, any story of somebody healing from that? No, I'm sure that that probably happened here and there, but I

don't remember that stuff now. Well, that kind of prayer is called intercessory prayer. You're interceding on behalf of somebody, maybe asking for them to heal. Right. Hopefully you're not praying for them to die. That could still be considered intercessory prayer, but for the most part, people pray that somebody's going to rebound from an illness or get over a streak of bad luck or something like that. It's also called distant prayer because it's not centered on the individual. You're praying out for somebody. These have also been studied. There's been some methodologies over the course of the last couple of decades, starting with this guy named Randolph Byrd, who's a physician. And he was the first to create this really groundbreaking

landmark study. Right, the late 1980s. Yeah, it was 88, I think. And I think he was a cardiac physician. Indeed. He assembled, I think, 353 different people's histories. And he found people who were statistically inseparable, meaning that they were the same age. They were the same race. They had the same heart conditions. They were on paper. They were one in the same, basically. Right. And he contacted some groups, I think it was in California, where he got in touch with some different denominations. I think they were all Christian, but he got in touch with Baptists and Presbyterians and Catholics and all that. And they had these groups get together in groups of three or four. And these people would have the name of one patient.

Right, their condition. Yeah. And they would pray that they had a speedy and I think effective recovery, something along those lines. Right. And they prayed for him over the course of, I don't know, several weeks, I believe. And after this praying was done, the physician Randolph Byrd went back and studied who thrived and who didn't. Right. Which you'd also say there's a control group of people who weren't prayed for. Right. Thanks a lot. Yeah, right. That's what I would have said. So he actually found that there was a really significant difference, like a huge difference actually between the recoveries of people who were prayed for and those who weren't prayed for.

Right. Something like 85%. 85% compared to 73.1%. That's enormous, statistically speaking. That's huge. 12% is very big. And the thing is, there is no one who could explain away what happened. Byrd's study has never been basically overturned. Right. The people who were praying didn't know the people they were praying for, the people who were being prayed for were, you know, there's nothing you can say that says, well, this is what happened. Right. Because that's a huge statistical difference. It is. That got the attention of the scientific community.

Of course. Big time. So all of a sudden, there's like a slew of basically follow-up studies that use Byrd's methodology. This is the most beautiful thing about Randolph Byrd, in my opinion. He used the scientific method. He used science to conduct an investigation into something that science doesn't believe in, which is prayer. Right. Intercessory prayer. And he created this study in such a way that it could be modeled. Like he said, here's how you do it. Right. And other people have followed the same model and they have come up with radically different results, basically. Another pretty big study was the STEP study. Right. Which is the study of the effects of

intercessory prayer. It was a huge study. It covered six different medical centers across the U.S. Right. And this is published in the American Heart Journal. Yeah. So it was pretty significant. It's bona fide. They basically broke these groups down into three groups, those who received prayer, but weren't aware of it, those who didn't receive any prayer, and those who received prayer and were aware that they were being prayed for. Exactly. And patients. Yeah. Yeah. So this study, like you said, it was published in the American Heart Journal, which is a pretty big journal as far as they go in this country. Right.

They found that those who didn't receive prayer had about the same kind of recovery as those who did. Right. It was like 52 percent to 51 percent. And even worse, those who were aware that they received prayer actually had the worst results. It was 59 percent of them had complications after heart surgery. Right. So this seems to fly in the face of the bird study. Yeah. It does. It's totally contradictory. It's also pretty counterintuitive, too. I mean, how would prayer be harmful? Right. And that's actually one of the reasons why people are investigating prayer, why scientists, why it's become kind of a niche field of study. Because it's not really, if people are praying,

maybe we should find out if it is, in fact, harmful. Science shouldn't just be like, go pray. We don't believe in that, whatever. Right. There should be investigations into it. And this is kind of startling. 59 percent of people who are aware they're being prayed for had complications following surgery. That alone warrants investigation into it. Right. So that step study was one of a number that have come up with, nobody's ever come up with the kind of statistical difference that Randolph Bird did. Right. I think personally, I'm a bit of a skeptic in life in general. And when I hear about studies like this, it's, to me, prayer is something that's hard to quantify statistically. Yeah. Because people pray in different ways. People pray for

different lengths of time. I'm not sure how you could say that this solid group that prayed, all prayed exactly the same in the same way and had the exact same beliefs. It's hard to quantify, if you ask me. It is. And again, Randolph Bird came the closest to it. He told these people how often to pray, what to say when they're praying. Specifically to pray for. Here's the problem with studying prayer is you can control these groups of people who are praying for these heart patients or whatever as much as you want. But if prayer is real, if prayer does work, right, and you've got somebody else out there praying for this patient, it completely screws up the results. Like the patient itself where they told not to pray for themselves. I don't know. I don't,

I don't know. And how would you control that? Right. And would you want to control that? Apparently prayer is the number one alternative medicine in America that tops vitamins and herbs, which is like a multi-billion dollar industry. Right. And the best part is prayer is free, of course. But you can't control how much prayer. You can't say, here's 10 cc's of prayer. Let's see if it has an effect. Exactly. And you also can't, you can't, you can't control other people coming along behind you and saying, I'm going to pray for this person. Right. So it's very difficult to study and not everybody thinks you should study it. Right. And this is, then this is, these are people that are being treated medically as well. This is not Christian scientists who,

from what I understand, a lot of times don't believe in medicine and they only believe in the power of prayer. Yeah. To heal. Yeah. No, these were, these were people who were being treated through modern medicine and were being prayed for. Right. So you kind of like, I don't know, there's different doctors and different levels of experience. And so that's something you also have to take into consideration as well. You can't say that everyone was getting the exact same care and their whole life history and whether or not these people typically recover quicker than others. I mean, there's, there's a lot of factors that weigh in here. There are, but you could also make the argument that all those factors would, would appear in any study.

No, that's true. You know, and prayer is just like this extra layer. Smackdown. Basically, you just smack me down. Yeah. Sorry, Chuck. I tried to do it gently. But like I said, not everybody thinks that we should be studying this, right? And that falls on both sides. There's obviously scientists who are totally skeptical of prayer and think it's a waste of time and funding. Right. But there's also religious, religious devotees who believe we shouldn't be studying this kind of thing either, that it's folly, that you couldn't possibly study something like God. Right. And one guy put it that studying heart conditions, studying the power of prayer is basically like asking a composer with, I think a quadrillion times the talent of

Beethoven to, to compose the notes to three blind mice. Like we're, we're getting so granular here that we're missing the big picture. Right. I would love to hear that version of three blind mice. But it'd be really, really good. It would be too. So yeah, ultimately the jury's still out. And I don't know personally whether I want it to ever come in. I think it'd be pretty cool. And I, I definitely believe that there are aspects of us as humans and among the universe that science either can explain under the scientific method or just hasn't figured out the right methodology to apply it. Right. Definitely don't think science explains all and anything science can explain doesn't exist. Right. And since my growing up in the church now here as an adult,

my belief is I'm sort of a to each his own kind of guy. Now, if you want to, if you want to pray and you feel like it has an effect on you and your family and your loved ones, I say go for it. If you're a skeptic and you don't think that it does, then you know, don't. Yeah. And try to avoid the harmful praying, you know, where you're, you're actually praying for somebody to, you know, become injured. That's just me. Yeah. And I don't think that, you know, come on. So different strokes for different folks. Fantastic. Yeah. Like Gary Coleman. All right. Well, coming up, Chuck is going to tell you about an article that satisfies the childhood fantasy of his. Indeed it does. There is no need for the outside world because we are

removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like he was a God. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal or hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it

than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take to America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table.

Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just, like, looting? Are they just, like, pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, what's the article then that, hold on, I love this, that satisfies a childhood fantasy. Right. It sounds so pervy. No, no, it's not at all.

It's, could I install a hidden passageway in my home? Awesome. And I think, I don't know, maybe it's a little boy thing. But when I was a little kid, just, like, hidden passageways, and tunnels, and all that stuff was just the coolest thing to me. That's Edmunds, right? Edmunds throughout that? Molly Edmunds? Yeah, I'm a great, great writer, Molly.

You know, I have a hidden passageway in my house growing up. Did you pull a book down from your library to activate it? No, no. It was, we had a linen closet, and for some reason, the interior of it was painted black. And there was a door at the back of the closet, and it opened up onto the steps going down to the basement, which immediately got you onto the other side of the house. Bring out the gimp. Hide and go seek on my house was awesome. Yeah, I bet.

It was very cool. So you can read that one. Could I install a hidden passageway in my home in about 500 million other super cool articles on HowStuffWorks.com? For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

It's ready. Are you? Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Bridgewater, the hit fiction podcast is back. A supernatural thriller presented in immersive 3D binaural audio. The Bridgewater Triangle. There is some kind of mystical force in this region that attracts monsters and paranormal activity. There's something beyond our understanding going on here. Starring Supernatural's Misha Collins, The Walking Dead's Melissa Ponziow,

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