Can someone’s prayers really help heal the sick?

Sunday, May 31, 2009, 13:43 By GSerrano
This news item was posted in Health & Medicine, Sci + Tech category and has 0 Comments and so far.




 

happiness heals

Physicists, being what they are, refuse to acknowledge the connection at molecular level between emotional and psychological states and physical state. The concept known as ‘quantum entanglement’ just doesn’t fly with scientists who say that the ‘relationship is purely correlational and not causal.’ 

The concept of ‘quantum entanglement’ rests on the premise that people in close relationships could be ‘entangled’ not just emotionally and psychologically, but also physically. Here is how it supposedly works: two particles that have interacted will behave as if still connected even if they are separated over some considerable distance. 

Which brings the debate to yet another level: does someone’s positive thoughts, which more often than not manifest through prayer, actually reach out, connect, and promote the health of another person? More explicitly, can someone’s prayer affect another person’s body?

Richard Sloan, professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, states, “Science understands how a person’s thoughts can influence his own body — for example, through chemical changes in the brain that affect the immune system.” However, he argues that “there are no plausible mechanisms that account for how somebody’s thoughts or prayers can influence the health of another person.”

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Via npr

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