Free Fingerprints of God by Barbara Bradley Hagerty Page A

more and more of these fighter cells.Viral load is a measure of how much of the HIV virus is in one’s system; the higher the viral load, the sicker the person becomes.
    Ironson found that people who felt abandoned by God after their diagnosis lost their CD4 cells at a rate 4.5 times faster than the people who relied on God to cope with the diagnosis; their viral load also increased. 7
    Let me repeat that astonishing statistic: Turning to God rather than rejecting God appears to boost your immune system and stave off the disease nearly five times as effectively.
    Next, Ironson looked at people’s “view of God.” Do you believe God loves you or that God is punishing you? She found that people who held a positive view of God maintained those CD4 cells twice as long as those who did not. And people who believed God loves them maintained the cells three times as long as those who felt God did not love them. 8
    Ironson compared one’s spirituality and view of God with a battery of other items that affect the course of the disease, including the mother of all predictors, depression. Depressed people saw their CD4 cells disappear twice as fast as those who were not depressed. But if they embraced a spiritual outlook on life, that more than offset the bad immunological effects of depression.
    “I find that extraordinary because depression is the most consistent, reliable predictor of how people do with illnesses, and not just HIV,” Ironson told me. “People who are depressed are much more likely to suffer a second heart attack or die. People diagnosed with cancer who are depressed are much more likely to have a recurrence and have a poorer disease course. So depression is a very well-established psychological factor, and to find another psychological factor that may potentially be more important is very surprising.”
    Ironson and her researchers looked for alternative explanations as to why spirituality might be related to better health. They ruled out other explanations through statistical analysis. They controlled for age, education, gender, and race—even church attendance, which has been linked to longevity. They controlled for psychological variables such as optimism, life stress, depression, and coping.
    “We wanted to determine whether there is some independent contribution of spirituality over and above other psychological constructs that other people had looked at,” she said.
    “And what did you find?” I asked.
    “We found that spirituality still predicted a significant amount in disease progression.”
    “Just so I understand it,” I said, “you found that if, say, someone wasn’t taking their meds and was depressed, they could still do better if they were spiritual than if they weren’t spiritual?”
    “Yes. Now, I’m not in any way suggesting that people shouldn’t take their meds,” she added, laughing. “This is really an important point. However, the effects of spirituality are over and above. So whether people are taking their meds or not, spirituality was still related to slower disease progression.”
    She paused a beat, to let the idea sink in. “Spirituality is our most powerful predictor to date.”
    While scientists might balk at the idea that “God” has anything to do with HIV progression, they readily agree that your thoughts affect your body. Here’s how it might work with HIV. Stress hormones that make your heart race and hands sweat, such as cortisol and norepinephrine, accelerate how quickly the HIV virus can replicate. Ironson said her research has shown that the stress hormone cortisol is lower in people who score high on having a “sense of peace” through meditation, belief in God, and other spiritual practices. She has found that norepinephrine is lower in people who score high on “altruism” and compassion, another component of spirituality. 9 In other words, Ironson connected the dots from a patient’s spiritual beliefs, to the chemicals in her brain, to the