Faith's role in healing draws scientific study

The Bradenton Herald (Florida)
December 29, 2007 Saturday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum, Contra Costa Times

Carla Dodd was 43 and pregnant with her second child when two rapid-fire brain hemorrhages threatened to end her life.

Her husband, John, is a medical malpractice attorney - logical, analytical.

But Dodd says he thinks prayer had much to do with his wife's long-shot recovery.

Scientists are taking a hard look at the value of faith as an instrument in healing.

Numerous studies show a link between faith and outlook, faith and well-being, faith and healing times.

Scientists at such prestigious institutions as California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Duke University in North Carolina and the George Washington University Institute for Spirituality and Health in the nation's capital are exploring the relationship of prayer and faith to healing.

More than half of physicians in an April survey by a group at the University of Chicago said that religion and spirituality significantly influence patients' health.

But the exact mechanism by which it works remains elusive.

"Does it change your blood markers?" asked neuropsychiatrist James Duffy, president and CEO of the Institute of Religion and Health in Houston. "You're going to see a lot of research directed at that over the next few years."

Religion can help those with chronic conditions, including traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke and arthritis, say the authors of a study at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

"Religion is infrequently discussed in rehabilitation settings and is rarely investigated in rehabilitation research," said University of Missouri health psychologist Brick Johnstone. "To better meet the needs of persons with disabilities, this needs to change."

Yoga, reading of religious texts, meditation or the laying of hands have value in a clinical setting, the researchers concluded.

To inquire about a patient's religious beliefs "is no different than inquiring about their sexual, psychological, substance use and legal histories," said Johnstone, who directs the university's Spirituality and Health Research Project.

"Our goal is to bring to the conversation that health is more than fixing your body," Duffy said. "Health is a transformative process that involves healing the spirit."

Hospital officials have long left patients' spiritual needs in the hands of chaplains, but they increasingly are reaching out to faith communities.

Parish, or faith community nursing, which combines spiritual and health services, has exploded since the American Nursing Association recognized the specialty in 2005.

Today, an estimated 10,000 faith community nurses work in American congregations.

John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., recently advertised for a supervising nurse with theological education. The new manager will offer support to nurses who work in religious congregations.

"We have a mission statement that says faith plays a role in healing," said Dwayne Michael, director of pastoral care at John Muir. "We do a spiritual assessment (of each patient)."

"With the exception of hospital chaplains, a focus on the spirit is not often found in the delivery of health care," said Rebecca Faith, who counsels, instructs and refers parishioners at First Congregational Church of Oakland, Calif. "Parish nurses fill that gap."

Faith works as a nurse practitioner at the University of California-San Francisco and is a registered nurse at Alta Bates Summit Hospital in Oakland.

Many chronic health problems have at their root a spiritual as well as a physiological dysfunction, she said.

"I see an epidemic of anxiety and fatigue among women. I will say, 'How's your spiritual life?' and (a woman) will say, 'I used to meditate but I don't anymore.' "

A spiritual emptiness helps spur addiction, and irreverence for the body as a sacred vessel can lead to disorders such as obesity and hypertension, she said.

"What do I do with them? I pray, I enter into an I-thou divine relationship and I covenant with the community," she said. "I speak to their values and beliefs."

Many of her patients believe in intercessory prayer, she said.

In San Francisco, a leading researcher in mind-body medicine found a positive link between intercessory prayer and the well-being of people with AIDS.

Prayed-for patients in a study by late University of California-San Francisco professor Elizabeth Targ had fewer setbacks and lived longer than a comparison group. A follow-up study found the same results. Targ later found a link between spirituality and well-being among women with breast cancer.

A connection notwithstanding, Jeff Leinen, medical director of the emergency department at Sutter Delta Hospital in Antioch, Calif., has qualms about medical practitioners assuaging the spirit. For one thing, it is too easy to impose one's faith on a patient, he said.

Leinen says a prayer before he performs a procedure or when a patient dies, "but I say it quietly, and to myself."

"Everybody has their own faith and belief," he said. "You have to be very, very careful."

At Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., which offers classes in yoga and meditation, "We only do what has been shown clinically to work," spokesman Jim Caroompas said. "These are very efficacious."

Some academics recoil at the blurring of the line between faith and health care, saying prayer, meditation and other faith practices resist definition or measurement.

Far more studies show no link between religious belief and healing than a positive one, said Richard Sloan, a Columbia University behavioral medicine professor and the author of "Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine." Suggesting one can mislead people and put an unfair burden on them, he said.

"Look, nobody disputes that religion and spirituality bring comfort in a time of difficulty, but when spirituality is brought into medical care, it is another issue entirely," he said.

"It can do all sort of harm because it causes people to confuse medical care with other aspects of their lives," he said. "It can lead them to avoid conventional medical care. And it can lead them to believe their health problems are from inadequate faith and devotion."

John Dodd, whose wife and daughter are now healthy, smiled when he was told about Sloan's skepticism.

"He doesn't realize there is so much to the art of medicine that is unknown," he said. "(Doctors) don't know everything because a lot of it isn't in their hands - the unknown, the unpredictable, the unforeseeable."

Guatemalan girl gets life saver, but family running out of time

Nov. 15, 2006

Pixieish, long haired and gregarious, Isabel Bueso, 11, wants to be a dancer and has a ballerina's extension to prove it.

Since she came to the United States from her native Guatemala, Isabel has tried horseback riding and ice skating. She names five best friends from her fifth-grade class at Lafayette Elementary School.

Point a camera her way and she mugs coyly.

She is also one of 1,100 people worldwide suffering from Maroteaux-Lamy Syndrome, an enzymatic disorder that ravages all the major systems of the body.

That she can do things like ride her bike in the park is a testament to a first-of-its-kind enzyme replacement therapy that has changed her life -- but has put her and her family in a harrowing conundrum.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical brought Isabel, her parents and sister Ana, now 14, to this country on tourist visas to participate in a study of the experimental treatment.

Her parents, skilled professionals, must now choose whether to live on charity in the U.S. or return to Guatemala and do without the medicine that is saving their daughter's life.

"We found out without the right visa, we can't work," said Karla Bueso. "Our hands are tied. We couldn't bring the medicine back to Guatemala, but we couldn't stay here because we couldn't work."

The breakthrough enzyme therapy has not yet been approved for use in Guatemala.

"She has improved significantly," said researcher Paul Harmatz, associate director of the Pediatric Clinic Research Center at Children's. "We are very optimistic."

Isabel suffers from mucopolysaccharidoses a genetic disorder. Sufferers lack the enzymes that break down and recycle waste in cells. Instead, waste builds up in cells, disrupting their function. It progressively damages the heart, bones, lungs and central nervous system.

Without the therapy, waste would quickly reaccumulate, accelerating the damage, Harmatz said.

"We virtually never see a patient with her level of disease beyond the age of 20, 21," he said.

Karla Bueso, a marketing specialist who once routinely arranged high-level corporate news conferences, found a modest apartment for her family not far from Children's. The Buesos spent much of their savings on furniture and bedding.

Karla and her husband, Alberto, a computer engineer, volunteer their time at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, where they are members. Alberto Bueso set up a computer network for the Monument Crisis Center in Concord.

On Wednesdays, Karla Bueso helps Isabel keep up with her schoolwork during her six-hour infusions at the hospital.

"My life changed so much," she said with a smile, selecting a file from a box of folders on the illness and its treatment. "I've become an expert on bargains. I got this printer at a garage sale for $2."

A Spanish-speaking aide who helped Isabel at school introduced the family to Lorraine Lyon, a church elder. The church quickly became a second family to the homesick Buesos and their ailing daughter.

"Isabel has become a grown person within herself," Lyon said. "She is a much stronger person than most people her age."

While they anxiously await word on their visas, the church has been paying their rent and buying their groceries so they can put all their resources into Isabel's medical treatment.

"This is a social justice issue," Lyon said "I've written to Ellen Tsauscher, Barbara Boxer, others. I've gotten form letters back saying 'We've passed your information on.'"

The H-1B visa allows U.S. employers to hire overseas professionals for up to six years. A lawyer is working for free to help them.

Healthy at birth, Isabel suffered respiratory infections during her first year of life.

But sobering evidence of a much larger problem appeared with a full-body X-ray: Virtually every bone in her body was damaged.

One day, Karla Bueso read an intriguing article on the seven types of MPS. She e-mailed the doctor, who invited the family to the United States to take part in a study of six patients. Her group was given a placebo, but after the six-month study concluded, she got the real thing -- and will as long as her family remains here.

Isabel said her worst problem is boredom during the long hours she spends in the hospital.

"It's fun when my sister comes," she said. "We can play."

When she first arrived in this country, she could barely walk.

"She had so much pain in her legs," Karla Bueso mused. "Now she can ride her bike in the park."

Commitment to aid fills life of cardiologist

Contra Costa Times
March 28, 2005 Monday FINAL EDITION

By Rebecca Rosen Lum, Times Staff Writer

Before work one stingingly frigid November morning, Jeff Ritterman drove out to Point Isabel, and, as the sky lightened to a pallid gray, joined several others to protest what they saw as the inadequate cleanup of a Superfund site.

A month later, he flew to Jordan, where he brought medical supplies and heard testimony about the health effects of the U.S.-Iraqi conflict.

The expression "be here now" seems coined for the Richmond cardiologist. He appears to have infinite curiosity, passion and focus for the issue in front of him, whether an individual patient, his community or large-scale epidemics.

"The first time I met him was when he showed up to a public hearing for the draft environmental impact report for Campus Bay," said Sherry Padgett, who heads Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development. The group monitors the cleanup of the former Stauffer Chemical plant, a Superfund site.

"He sat up front by himself and asked a series of very probing, intelligent questions," she said. "He came up to me afterward and gave me his card, and said, 'Send me everything you've got. I'm not letting go of this.'"

Shyaam Shabaka, founder of the Richmond EcoVillage Farm Learning Center, coaxed Ritterman onto the board of Food First, an Oakland-based think tank focused on food and development policy.

"He's very active in the community -- a doctor doing everything he can to keep people out of the hospital," Shabaka said.

That takes teamwork, Ritterman says.

"We have a lot of things here in Richmond we have to look at if we're interested in the health of the community," Ritterman said. "Pesticides sprayed next to an elementary school -- local concerns that impact on people's health."

He encourages his patients to strap on a pedometer and count their steps, as he does. They can visit his Web site and track his success at meeting his own 5-mile-a-day goal.

"I challenge them. I say, 'Beat me,'" he said, grinning.

He urges his patients to stock up on organic fruits and vegetables every Tuesday at the weekly Farm Stand farmers market, a three-way partnership among Kaiser, Richmond EcoVillage and the county's wellness program, which he helped found.

"Health is not just the absence of disease but a state of physical, mental and spiritual well-being," he says on his Web site.

On a recent afternoon, he took time to show a reporter pictures from his trip -- some quite grim, such as the remains of a child torn apart in a cluster bomb blast. After an interview, he'll head out to a memorial service for a former patient.

The next day, after his clinic hours, he'll speak at Boalt Hall about the health and human rights consequences of the war.

"He's very focused, very calm and extremely smart -- which is probably how he manages to do everything he does and stay so calm," said P.J. Ballard, media officer for Kaiser Permanente.

Flanked by al-Jazeera reporters, Ritterman in January joined parents whose children have died in the terrorist attacks of and conflicts that followed Sept. 11, 2001. They were part of a peace delegation to Amman, Jordan.

The group included a woman whose firefighter son died in the World Trade Center conflagration, a couple whose only son died in combat, the mother of a young man killed when he stepped on a cluster bomb, and more.

"We did a lot of crying," Ritterman said. They transported $500,000 worth of medical supplies in car trunkloads -- to avoid attracting bandits -- and brought $100,000 in cash to buy more.

Once there, he found a cosmopolitan population -- well-schooled, well-traveled and surprisingly open-minded.

"And everybody, everybody smokes," he said. "I thought we'd get that 'You infidels!' stuff, but no."

Nothing prepared him for the testimony of a Jordanian physician who detailed a startling spike in the number of children born without lenses, and in some cases, without eyes at all. The phenomenon has been linked to exposure to depleted uranium.

"I was just sobbing," he said. "Since then, I've done tons of medical research, but before that, I'd never heard of it."

Ritterman's "great affections to the innocent Iraqi peoples -- touch me in the heart," said Mohammed Salman, a doctor who has been following the eye condition anophthalmia. He has documented 13 cases to date.

He was surprised to encounter one upshot of the preconflict sanctions against Iraq: Doctors had not seen medical journals in years.

"Doctors would tell me, 'You've got to understand, we're 10 to 13 years behind.'"

Ritterman also met a father and son with leukemia. The family had moved to Jordan to get medical care but couldn't afford living there. Ritterman sent them his honorarium for a speech at Stanford University.

Since he returned in January, he has been trying to rally interest in the spate of anophthalmias. He has been speaking at medical conferences and universities throughout the country.

"I'm committed to sharing this experience. It's citizen diplomacy."

He has two grown children, Miranda, a Ph.D. candidate focused on epidemiology and public health, and Judah, a psychology project manager, both at UC Berkeley.

He met his partner, Vivian Feyer, a psychologist who also owns a fair trade import business, when he swung by a pal's place for lunch and found her there, house-sitting. The two have been together five years.

She wasn't seeking a romantic commitment; "he was just the most loving person I'd ever met," Feyer said.

"He's taught me a lot -- especially about being in partnership. And it's really not about compromise. It's about wanting each other to be happy."

"When we realize we're starting to fight, we shift immediately. We have a commitment not to invest in someone winning and someone losing, but in the success of the relationship," she said.

Both juggle full schedules, but increasingly work and travel together. Feyer shot all the photos of the trip to Amman.

For Ritterman, Tuesday is a community meeting at the Martin Luther King Community Center. Wednesday, he joins a weekly drumming circle. There are all-day clinics, speaking engagements, hospital rounds.

"The world is holding so much sadness," he said. "But I feel energized."