New research proves that individuals who attend church services have a better chance of living longer, according to The Washington Post.
The study was released in a journal published by the American Medical Association.
To conduct the study, researchers studied more than 76,000 female nurses — many of whom were Protestant and Catholic — over the course of 20 years. By the end of the 20-year span, over 13,000 of them had died.
Through the study, the researchers unearthed the following findings:
- The nurses who went to a religious service more than once per week were 33 percent less likely to be among the 13,000 who had died.
- The odds of dying decreased 26 percent among women who attended a service once a week.
- Nurses who went to a service less than once per week had a 13 percent less chance of dying.
- Women who attended church were not any more or less likely to get breast cancer, but those who did attend were less likely to die from it.
- The nurses who attended church services were also more likely to quit smoking and less likely to show signs of depression.
Tyler VanderWeele, PhD, one of the co-authors of the study, said the researchers "were a bit surprised, initially, by the magnitude of the findings," according to The Washington Post.
Still, the researchers proposed the following conclusion to their findings: "Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that physicians could explore with their patients, as appropriate," they wrote. "Our results do not imply that healthcare professionals should prescribe attendance at religious services, but for those who already hold religious beliefs, attendance at services could be encouraged as a form of meaningful social participation."