The clips of pregnant pigs confined to iron cages, a cow being pushed off the back of a truck, and male chicks suffocated to death by the thousands made me feel sick; something about the animals’ helpless dependence reminded me of my own children.

What really affected me, however, was the portrait of Elaine West, a conservative Christian who runs a farm-animal sanctuary in Florida. When she first learned how animals are treated on factory farms, West said she was “so ashamed as a Christian [that] I was supporting that kind of horrific abuse and cruelty.”

Although I’m a Muslim and not a Baptist, as West is, I could relate to her sense of shame. The Prophet Muhammad spoke clearly against cruelty to animals, even telling the story of a prostitute who was granted entrance to heaven because she gave a thirsty cat a drink. For some reason, the animal-rights campaign has never struck a chord with me, but when West confessed to her Christian “shame” about industrial farming, she was speaking my language.

As a journalist, I was a bit embarrassed that this single presentation from the Humane Society had such an influence on me. I’m supposed to cut through the clever PR on any particular side of an argument and get the facts to my readers. But my subsequent research—namely the 2008 report from the nonpartisan Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production—confirmed much of what I had seen in the film.

Eating Mercifully is part of a wider program at the Humane Society. “Animals and Religion,” a section of the HSUS website, links faith traditions to concern for animal welfare. The press kit handed out at the luncheon, for example, included an essay titled “A religious Case for Compassion for Animals” from conservative writer Matthew Scully. Scully quotes Pope Benedict XVI who told a journalist that while humans are allowed to eat animals:

“[W]e cannot just do whatever we want with them….Certainly a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality [between people and animals] that comes across in the Bible.”

Scully also criticizes fellow conservatives for dismissing animal welfare as a left-wing issue: “We belittle the activists with their radical agenda, scarcely noticing the radical cruelty they seek to redress.” I’m guilty of a similar kind of myopia. I’ve often written off concern over the meat we eat as a bourgeois preoccupation afforded only to those who can afford to shop at Whole Foods.

With some trepidation about where it might lead—for example, to the dreaded Thanksgiving Tofurky—I’ve been buying less meat and, when I do purchase it, trying to buy meat that is raised humanely. I was happy to see that my favorite fast-food chain, Chipotle, uses meat from animals that have lived a decent life. I doubt I’ll ever be a vegetarian like Elaine West, but it feels good to at least take some small steps toward making life a little better for the animals I will eventually eat.

(PHOTO: FOTOLIA)

 
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Researchers from Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion released these survey results in a standing-room-only press conference in Washington, D.C., on September 18.

The pool of 1,721 respondents from across the United States said they had been touched by the divine in other ways as well. More than half (55%) said they had personally been protected from harm by a guardian angel, and 20% reported hearing the voice of God speaking to them.

“Religious and mystical experiences are an overlooked aspect of our national religious life, neglected by researchers and ignored or even denied by leading theologians and seminary professors,” writes religion professor Rodney Stark in What Americans Really Believe, the book that analyzes the survey’s findings.

I took up Stark’s challenge and asked Christopher Bader, one of the researchers, to tell me a little bit about the people behind these statistics.

For one thing, Bader explained, more women than men (18% compared to 13%) report having had a miraculous healing, and nonwhites are more than twice as likely as whites to report the same. Education and income levels also enter into it: Basically, the more education you have, and the more money you earn, the less likely you are to report a miraculous healing.

That said, although half of those who say they have been miraculously healed had only an eighth-grade education, 1 in 10 had postgraduate degrees. In other words, belief in these experiences touches people from all walks of life.

Next page: The church you belong to plays a role

Pentecostals and African-American Protestants were far more likely than other groups, such as mainline Protestants or Catholics or Jews, to say they have either witnessed or experienced a miraculous healing firsthand.

But I still had more questions. What do these experiences feel like? Are they dramatic transforming moments or a gradual feeling of recovery in spite of the odds? Does it usually happen in a religious setting, like a church or revival, or can it happen in a hospital under the care of doctors? And the $60,000 question: Can science prove that a miraculous healing has taken place?

Unfortunately, the Baylor survey—though broad in scope—didn’t touch on those topics.

But I did find one story, featured on the evangelical TV show The 700 Club, about Waid Kidd, a man who suffered from post-polio syndrome, a painful, incurable condition that left him debilitated. A churchgoing man, Kidd had been prayed over many times, according to the report, to no avail. Yet one Sunday, he felt “called” to have church members lay hands on him. “The power of the Lord starting pouring over me,” he said.

“As I can best describe it, it was a bucket of warm water, and it was slowly poured over the top of my head. It went down over me, except it didn’t just go down over me; I felt it go through me. It went all the way to my feet and went out of [my] heels. I realized the pain was gone.”

While I have never experienced such severe illness or such dramatic healing, I wonder if others who have had such experiences may be reluctant, for fear of ridicule, to share their stories. I hope this study and the interest in it will start the discussion about this “overlooked aspect” of religious life in America.

(PHOTO: FLICKR.COM)

 
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Ramadan

I know that the purpose of fasting is spiritual—God will reward us in the next life—but in this lifetime, fasting sometimes makes me an ineffective, irritable person. So I was excited to learn that Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey, MD, had spoken at a recent Renaissance Weekend event about how caloric restriction can improve brain function.

I emailed Dr. Ratey to find out if those benefits might extend to religious fasting, and he sent me a 2006 paper on the brain functioning of men during the Ramadan fast. The researchers studied a small group of healthy men during and after the holy month, looking at their brain activity via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They concluded that “all individual results showed consistent and significant increase of activity in the motor cortex during fasting.”

Other research shows similar results
That research builds on the work of other scientists, including Mark Mattson, PhD, who heads a neuroscience lab at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging. Mattson has done important research on how dietary restrictions can significantly protect the brain from degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

In a 2003 article, Mattson and others reported that rats who were deprived of food every other day, or restricted to a diet at 30% to 50% of normal calorie levels, showed not only decreased heart rates and blood pressure, but also “younger” brains, with “numerous age-related changes in gene expression.”

Mattson and his colleagues also shared data from research on humans, which shows that populations with higher caloric intakes—such as the United States and Europe—have a greater prevalence of Alzheimer’s than do populations that eat less—such as China and Japan. The authors speculate that humans may have adapted to conditions of feast and famine; the stress of having little food, they write, “may induce changes in gene expression that result in adaptive changes in cellular metabolism and the increased ability of the organism to reduce stress.”

Although this research is relatively new, with many questions left unanswered, the authors conclude that “it seems a safe bet that if people would incorporate a spartan approach to food intake into their lifestyles, this would greatly reduce the incidence of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and stroke.” (Of course, how this recommendation translates for individual people remains almost a complete unknown; consult with your own doctor before restricting your diet in dramatic ways.)

Next page: Finding motivation from on high

But here’s the hard part: Although we know eating too much leads to all sorts of health problems, “it has proven very difficult to successfully implement prolonged dietary-restriction regimens,” reports Mattson and his team. Information and doctor’s orders are rarely enough motivation.

This last observation gave me hope, because it seemed the authors were overlooking the role of religion; it can inspire people in ways information or experts don’t. Would I be undergoing this rigorous month of fasting unless I believed strongly it was the right thing for me to do? Probably not. And the same goes for millions of Muslims around the world.

And many other religions include fasting or dietary restrictions as part of their religious observances. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, for example, fast one Sunday a month. The Orthodox Church in America notes five separate fasting seasons on its website, in addition to individual fast days; during some of these fasts, all food is restricted, and during other fasts, only certain foods are off-limits. Some Roman Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays, and all do during Lent. Many types of Buddhist monks abide by a code that prohibits eating after noon each day.

Science may only now be discovering that some of these religious practices, both ancient and modern, offer nourishment not just for the soul, but for the body as well.

(PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/123RF/HEALTH)

 
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Clips like that are hardly an advertisement for the drug, which can be legally bought online. Some states, however, have passed laws ranging from limits on possession to making Salvia illegal. But the video accompanying the Times‘s article also shows another kind of user. On camera, a 29-year-old father from Waco, Texas, identified only as Nathan, smokes a pipe of Salvia, then appears to enter a state of meditation while reclining peacefully in a chair. The drug, he says, “awakens something inside you that is greater than yourself.”

Healing properties?

It is this potential for good that seems to have caught the attention of researchers, and Salvia, whose toxic side effects (if any) are unknown, is only one of several hallucinogenic drugs some scientists believe may have healing properties that overlap with the religious or spiritual experiences users report.

In a 2006 study conducted at Johns Hopkins University, for example, volunteers were given controlled doses of psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms.” Some volunteers experienced anxiety at the time, but two months after taking the drug, most said the experience had “substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior consistent with changes rated by community observers.”

Psychiatric researchers in South Carolina received the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use ecstasy (MDMA) to treat patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and found that many patients were able to approach and diffuse fears that had left them almost disabled, according to the Washington Post Magazine. And a recent Baltimore Sun editorial called for further research into the drug’s medicinal value.

Next: Exploring the spiritual connection

Is there a connection, then, between drugs that can induce religious-type experiences and drugs that have the potential to heal? I’m not the first to ask that question. The San Francisco-based Council on Spiritual Experiences, a collaborative project of scientists and religious figures, has supported research—including the 2006 study on psilocybin—on how some drugs may provide a valid shortcut to religious healing experiences.

“Profound experiences of unity with the cosmos…sometimes lead to lasting, and lastingly beneficial, changes in consciousness and behavior,” the council’s website states, adding that the use of certain plants and chemicals may represent a legitimate and potentially safe way to reach such states.

A quick survey of Salvia‘s history—some of which is presented in this documentary by the late Oxford historian and archeologist Andrew Sherratt—shows that the drug was originally used by Mazatec shamans in Oaxaca, Mexico. In his film, Sherratt says that although Western culture associates hallucinogenic plants with illegal drugs, “there are many cultures for whom these plants are seen as sacred and are regarded as the key to another mystical world.”

But sacred experiences and mystical worlds seem like a far cry from the sometimes disturbing online videos of Salvia use, as does the story—detailed in the Times article—about a New Yorker who apparently shot himself in the face shortly after using the drug. When it comes to the potential therapeutic uses of hallucinogens, and the fact that some health-care professionals are afraid to even speak on the record about them for fear of legal repercussions, it seems that such drugs may remain the province of the young and foolish for the time being.

(PHOTO: SAGEWISDOM.ORG)

When Palin heard the diagnosis (after prenatal testing, reports People magazine), she said it was “very, very challenging,” confusing, and initially made her sad, according to an April article in the Anchorage Daily News. After she gave birth to Trig in April, the Daily News reports, she emailed a letter to friends and family, written in the voice of and signed, “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.” It read, in part: “Many people will express sympathy, but you don’t want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You will have to trust me on this.”

From that letter, it looks like Palin’s faith—she has called herself a nondenominational “Bible-believing Christian”—probably played a role in her family’s decision to continue the pregnancy. But what about other women?

I know from reading some of the heartrending posts on this forum for women who terminate pregnancies for medical reasons that no one takes the decision lightly. But I wanted to see if there was scientific data on whether religiously minded people are more likely to continue a Down syndrome pregnancy than others.

The first thing I found was that termination rates for prenatally diagnosed Down syndrome pregnancies are pretty high, though statistics vary. In a 1996 study in Hawaii, 84% of such pregnancies ended in termination. A California data set, also from 1996, showed a termination rate of 58%, while a 1999 study from Great Britain showed a 92% rate.

But rates of religious affiliation are similarly high—in the United States, at least. According to a 2008 survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, more than 80% of Americans identify with one religion or another, and even among the 16% who describe themselves as “unaffiliated,” a large majority say they believe in God. My unscientific conclusion from looking at these numbers? Many people who end pregnancies diagnosed with Down syndrome probably consider themselves to be religious or say they believe in God.

I called Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics at Northwestern University’s Center for Genetic Medicine, for some perspective. She was quick to remind me that when it comes to pregnancy termination, not all religious beliefs point in the same direction. “Being a very religious person might lead you to think [pregnancy termination] is a necessary answer to a human situation,” she says.

The Catholic Church teaches that “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception,” including cases involving Down syndrome or other abnormalities. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. And yet, many religious traditions have only recently begun to grapple with the tough choices families face after learning the results of prenatal tests.

American Muslim scholars, for example, offer no clear guidelines on terminating Down syndrome pregnancies, saying that individual families should consult religious and legal experts. Buddhists around the world disagree about abortion, but even one Tibetan Buddhist teacher who is strongly antiabortion also advises that decisions about abnormal pregnancies are ones “we make for ourselves.”

Zoloth, on a strictly anecdotal basis, says that she believes families who choose to continue with Down syndrome pregnancies are “disproportionately” religious, coming from strong Christian or Jewish backgrounds. But John Evans, a sociologist of religion at the University of California at San Diego, tells me there is no data on this point, in part because ethics panels would veto studies that involve asking such sensitive questions.

Talking with Zoloth and Evans confirmed for me what is obvious from reading individual stories of families who have faced Down syndrome pregnancies: The decision to continue with the pregnancy—or not—is a complex and profound one, with many factors coming into play. And as one Catholic mother writes, you don’t always feel the way you expect to when faced with the question of termination.

“I think for many people, [a Down syndrome pregnancy] is a critical test of your own capacities and sense of life’s meaning and values,” Zoloth says. “Many people make those decisions by recourse to their religion, but not all. Many make recourse to other sources of faith, and perhaps their own sense of humanity.”

No matter what the guidance from our own belief systems or personal convictions, it is a choice that may surprise us if we ever have to face it.

(PHOTO: DAYLIFE.COM)

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The fast itself, which is one of the five “pillars” or central tenets of Islam, means forsaking food and drink (and smoking, sex, and anger) from sunrise to sundown each day; children, the elderly, pregnant women, and breast-feeding women, as well as people who are ill or traveling, are exempt.

Because the Muslim calendar is lunar, Ramadan (the ninth month), creeps forward every year by about 10 days. This year it will start and finish before daylight savings has ended, meaning longer days without food. On the first day of fasting next week, for example, we won’t break our fast (with water, dates, and a light supper) until 7:40 p.m. When I became a Muslim nine years ago, Ramadan fell smack during the shortest days of the year, so the fast ended as early as 4:15 p.m.; some days it felt like little more than skipping lunch.

This year, I will wake well before dawn to eat breakfast, drink my beloved coffee, and say my morning prayers. Then I’ll try to squeeze in another hour or two of sleep before rousing my boys, serving them breakfast, and seeing them off to school.

Then it’s time to work—without my habitual 11 a.m. second breakfast and late lunch. Getting work done in the afternoon when you’re fasting is painful. In countries where the majority of people are Muslim, offices often close in the afternoon during Ramadan, so people can go home and sleep.

The religious purposes of the fast are to help us build inner muscles of patience, self-discipline, and compassion for those in need. While I am looking forward to this special month, with its social get-togethers and opportunities for spiritual reflection, I also wonder how I can possibly manage to go without food while still taking care of my kids, working full-time, and getting the exercise I need to keep myself sane.

I’ve actually only fasted three complete Ramadans. During six of the nine years that I’ve been a Muslim, I was either pregnant or nursing. Last year was my first year fasting as a working mom. Boy, was it hard. This year, with an even heavier workload, and a plan to run a half-marathon in November, I worry about finding the energy I need to get through the day.

I am comforted, though, when I remember that millions of people around the world will be going through this with me. In that way, fasting for Ramadan reminds me of natural childbirth or Oprah running a marathon; it’s an extreme sport, but one that average people do every day.

So here’s my anxiety-management plan: First, relax and get into the religious spirit of the holiday. Second, cut back on work enough to allow for afternoon naps. And third, keep up with at least a light exercise schedule, maybe running two or three miles after the day’s fast is over and the kids are in bed.

Here’s hoping I can get through Ramadan with some deep breaths, patience, and the faith that I am capable of more than I can imagine.

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(PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO)

Here’s a peek at the Summer Olympics of the future: a swimmer racing with surgically lengthened arms, widened nostrils (for more efficient breathing), and enlarged webbing between his fingers. Sounds scary, right? Not to Andy Miah, who teaches bioethics at the University of the West of Scotland and outlined this exact scenario in a Washington Post op-ed this past Sunday, calling it “only natural.”

Enhancing ourselves is only human, Miah argues, even if it requires surgery or genetic modifications. After all, the early Greeks ate mushrooms to improve their sports prowess, Miah says. “We need to abolish our current anti-doping rules and embrace a performance policy that recognizes the merit of using human enhancements,” writes Miah. 

Genetic manipulation is already getting attention in Beijing. In late July, a German TV journalist posed as an Olympic coach and reported that a doctor in China offered to sell him a stem-cell treatment. Such “gene doping,” a technique in which an athlete’s cells are altered with virus-carrying genes or other performance-enhancing changes that might last a lifetime, is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. (Check out this info-graphic from Science News to see how it sometimes works.)

Essentially using the same techniques as risky gene therapy (such as those that caused the death of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger, and leukemia in a handful of children treated for the deadly “bubble boy disease”), gene doping is the newest concern in terms of performance enhancement because it’s nearly impossible to detect.

For another take on Miah’s bold argument, I called up Ronald M. Green, an ethicist and author of the 2007 book, Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice. “Biochemical or genetic interventions to win Olympic gold are a bad idea,” he tells me.

He offers two reasons. First, if athletes engage in gene doping to seek a “positional” advantage (i.e., to beat out everyone else), “then all competitors will be drawn into a genetic arms race for the top.” That leads to the second problem: safety. Because genetic doping techniques are only a few years old, their long-term, or even medium-term, effects are unknown.

But Green does not believe that genetic enhancement should be banned to maintain the “integrity of sport.” “The idea that sports is all about pure effort is poppycock,” says Green. “Sports is the domain of genetic inequality.”

In his book, for example, Green points out that Lance Armstrong has exceptional genetic endowments, such as extra-long femur bones and lungs that are extraordinarily good at processing oxygen; yet no one describes his “natural” advantages as unfair, even though Armstrong won them through the gene lottery of birth.

Because some people are naturally gifted and others are not, Green envisions a world where gene therapies are used to level the playing field. As gene modification therapies become safer, more effective, and more universal, Green predicts, “More parents are going to opt for genetic abilities for their kids,” whether that modification takes place in the prenatal stage or later. Parents may choose therapies that allow a child to overcome abnormal shortness or lack of coordination, so the child can “play [sports] at a respectable level.”

Well, that’s an entirely different ethical question (and use of technology). Gene doping involves the genetic modification of an adult’s cells that could possibly last for an individual’s lifetime (but is not passed on to one’s children). Prenatal genetic modification would change every cell in an infant’s body, and could possibly be passed on to the next generation. And performing gene doping on children begs the question of informed consent—do parents have the right to make lifelong changes in their offspring’s genes?

If Green is right, my own sons may face questions completely foreign to me when starting their own families. By then, some 20-plus years from now, maybe prenatal genetic treatment will be as routine as LASIK. Will I have any insights to offer? How do any of us weigh the moral and health implications of this brave new world?

As experts grapple with this, I’m watching closely. On the Olympic stage, international attention gives us the opportunity to think seriously about something that, like swimmers with webbed fingers, seems too strange or creepy to be true, but could be our future.

This post has been updated since it was originally published.

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(PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES)

Dr. Hamilton, the former chief of neurosurgery at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, tells story after story of how the strange, tragic, and sometimes amazing hand of fate enters the most sterile operating room, and how hope—and forces more mysterious than hope—can mean the difference between life and death.

One of the most gripping stories is about Thomas, a 10-year-old patient at the Pediatric Burn Service in Boston, who had burns all over his body after falling on a high-voltage power line. In the early, critical days, Thomas’s body rejected skin graft after skin graft from recently deceased strangers. Then, writes Dr. Hamilton, “fate intervened.”

Thomas’s 42-year-old father died of a heart attack, and Dr. Hamilton and his team used the father’s skin to swaddle Thomas. The night after the surgery, Thomas regained consciousness and asked what had happened to his father, whom he said he could see standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at him.

“The spirit of Thomas’s father had come from beyond the realm of flesh to intervene, to protect, and maybe even guide us as we took care of his son,” writes Dr. Hamilton, who saw Thomas again years later, still deformed by his injuries but able to flash a radiant smile. As Dr. Hamilton sees it, “Supernatural comfort is all around us…and never leaves us alone without divine strength and protection.”

At first I found it strange that Dr. Hamilton took Thomas at his word, believing that the father’s spirit was real. But Dr. Hamilton writes convincingly of his evolution from an achievement-minded resident (who, for example, called the children on the burn ward “crispy critters”) to a doctor humbled by the lives and deaths of his patients. That journey opened him up to the less scientific realms of human existence. Part of that transformation involved his own experience suffering from a severe back injury that eventually forced him to quit surgery. “Suffering is not the point of living,” he writes. “It’s the background against which we discover love’s power over death, over illness.”

Those are pretty inspiring words, and as I read the book late at night, I couldn’t help but stop for a moment to watch my sleeping children and feel grateful for their intact skin, their pain-free sleep, their simple existence.

Dr. Hamilton is aware that other surgeons, scientists, and skeptics will dismiss his collection of stories as mere anecdotes. But as integrative health pioneer Andrew Weil writes in the book’s foreword, “Good science begins with uncontrolled observation. If observations do not fit the standard mode of reality—especially if they do not fit—scientists should give them attention.” In other words, science begins with anecdotes.

Given this endorsement, I was disappointed to learn that some stories in Dr. Hamilton’s book are amalgams of several patient stories—including a fascinating tale about a clinically dead woman whose “spirit” seemed to remain alive while on the operating table. Dr. Hamilton’s own story about a Navajo shaman helping to free him from the spirit of a boy who died under his care also strained my own limits of credulity at the sheer drama of Dr. Hamilton’s life.

Whatever the facts of certain cases he relates (and some details are obviously changed for privacy reasons), and whatever a reader’s ability to suspend disbelief, Dr. Hamilton’s “Twenty Rules to Live By”—included at the end of the book—has applications for everyone. Ranging from “Find a doctor who cares about you” to “Develop your own healing rituals,” they are not just for patients but for anyone who faces death—a group that, as Dr. Hamilton points out, includes all of us.

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Oprah says cosmetic surgery isn’t something women should be ashamed of, but still, the idea of spending thousands of dollars and undergoing surgery simply to look better doesn’t sit right with me. Since I’m a religious person who tends to think in moral terms, I called up bioethicist Arthur Caplan to get some perspective.

“[Cosmetic surgery] can seem like vanity or self-indulgence, or wasteful in terms of spending that money in the face of other needs,” says Caplan, who directs the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “But I am not convinced that anything you pursue only to make yourself look or feel better is wrong. If that were true, we’d have to condemn people who dye their hair or wear deodorant.”

But plastic surgery is a riskier endeavor than dying your hair, and that makes it a more complicated choice. The death of Kanye West’s mother last year, for example, may have been related to cosmetic surgeries she’d had, including a tummy tuck, which Steven Hopping, the president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, has described as “one of the most dangerous” cosmetic procedures.

“It’s one thing to accept risks when you’re trying to save a life or forestall a terrible disability,” Caplan tells me. “But if you are harmed or die for cosmetic reasons, that’s the hardest, most frivolous, and least necessary type of risk.”

If you’re considering cosmetic surgery, Caplan recommends consulting with someone other than the person who stands to make money off the procedure. For the religiously inclined, it makes sense to consult with a religious leader, he says. (For anyone thinking of cosmetic surgery, see Health.com‘s guide to asking the right questions.)

As a Muslim, I’ve always thought that cosmetic surgery isn’t allowed, on the basis that it permanently changes the body God created and gave as a “trust” to us. But a quick email exchange with Muslim studies professor Jonathan Brockopp set me straight. In fact, Brockopp says that Muslim religious scholars have generally given the green light to cosmetic procedures that “restore functionality”—for example, after an auto accident or mastectomy.

The Catholic Church seems to have a similarly nuanced take on the issue. Although the Church’s official catechism doesn’t directly address the subject, cosmetic surgery has to be evaluated in terms of “guiding moral principles,” writes Marcel LeJeune, a lay campus minister at Texas A&M, in a blog response to a question from a Catholic considering breast augmentation. If the procedure is not for something considered immoral by the Church (such as gender-reassignment surgery), then “elective plastic surgery is left to the prudent choice of those involved,” explains LeJeune.

In contrast, Buddhists monks at the U.S. retreat center run by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh must abide by a monastic rule that specifically describes cosmetic surgery as an “offense.” Clark Strand, a former Zen monk and contributing editor at the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, tells me that this rule only applies to some monks. Among lay Western Buddhists, Strand says, “There is no widely observed prohibition against body modification, although certain ancient texts could be interpreted that way.” Among young Western Buddhists, tattoos and piercings are commonplace, he says.

Realistically, I probably would never pay the thousands of dollars for surgery or take the risks involved. (After all, I still wear glasses after years of thinking about LASIK.) But considering the issue from various points of view diffused my gut feeling that nontherapeutic plastic surgery is, on the face of it, morally problematic.

“There’s a notion in our society, which descends from the Puritan tradition, that taking short cuts is wrong, that if you want to look better you have to ‘earn it,’” Caplan tells me.

His point—that beautifying and enhancing ourselves is a neutral human instinct, and that the risks of cosmetic surgery have to be weighed maturely—makes sense. I might be religious, but I’ve never considered myself puritanical.

(PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES)

 
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Sure, people have suffered far worse fates at the hands of others than simply not being visited, but this small injustice has been taking up a lot of my psychic space, and I’ve begun to wonder what these emotions are doing to my health.

So I called Stephen Post, a bioethicist who studies altruism and health, and he recommended that I forgive my friend. It turns out that forgiveness is actually good for you.

“Forgiveness is really about letting go of bitterness and hostility,” he tells me. “You might find yourself driving down the highway, thinking again about how someone hurt you three years ago. That kind of rumination is a very strong human tendency, but it’s not very good for us.”

Anger triggers our stress response, that quick-run-there’s-a-snake reaction that elevates our cortisol, or stress hormone, levels. “Anger is very healthy, but only in small doses,” Post says. Feeling indignant about being wronged—I am worthy of visiting—is an important act of self-protection.

But when anger is left “turned on,” says Post, “it can overwhelm and possess you.” Anger can trigger a heart attack, among other negative consequences. On the flip side, forgiveness has been linked in multiple studies to improved health outcomes: One 2003 study, for example, found that cardiac patients who were angry had decreased blood flow to their hearts; those who were able to forgive others did not.

That sounds like an easy enough idea, but the act of forgiving someone can be quite hard. “Just deciding to forgive someone doesn’t work very well,” Post wrote in his book, Why Good Things Happen to Good People. You need to work at it, especially because forgiveness takes time.

Here are a few of the exercises Post recommends in his book.

• Think about all your grudges and resentments, large and small. Then imagine each of these grudges as a potato. Put all those imaginary potatoes in an imaginary sack and carry them around with you. Pretty heavy, right? Seeing this weight of negative emotion in your life can motivate you to forgive.

• Examine those hurts and injustices that cause you pain. This may be difficult.

• Consider the other person. Ask yourself: “Is it possible to see this person as a member of humanity, who, like me, is flawed?”

• Write down a definition of forgiveness you feel comfortable with.

• Release that negative emotion to God, or the universe, or however you conceive of that which is bigger than yourself.

Post emphasizes that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Reconciliation may require that the other person feels sorry for what they’ve done. Forgiveness is about you making that internal change for yourself, rather than being trapped by another person’s stubbornness.

I’ve tried to take these steps when it comes to my friend who won’t come to see me. It’s not easy, and at moments I still feel resentful. But guess what? Just last week that friend called with a question: Could she come over for a visit?

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As a Muslim American, I have to alter my behavior to avoid those kinds of situations. Flying to and from Wisconsin this past weekend for a wedding, my husband and I encountered the usual problems of air travel: a delayed flight; our 2-year-old, who refused to sit down. But being Muslims, we had to tackle another kind of logistics: At the Milwaukee airport, where I couldn’t quickly find a chapel, we offered our afternoon prayers in a dimly lit and somewhat stinky baby-changing room rather than pray in public and risk being questioned or even barred from our flight.

Given such real and threatened legal harassment, and the general suspicion of all things Muslim—as evidenced recently when Barack Obama volunteers barred two women in head scarves from appearing near the candidate (Obama later personally apologized)—I wanted to know: Has there been a rise in stress-related ailments among Muslim Americans?

“Right now, there is no published research with that finding—but there are many anecdotes,” Hamada Hamid, editor of the Journal of Muslim Mental Health, told me. “Clinically, what we’ve seen since 9/11 is that for [Muslims] who already had emotional stress or depression, or more severe psychological illness, the increased stress in many cases worsened their conditions.”

Other observers of the American Muslim community have reported increases in stress-related illness, and one researcher found evidence of post-9/11 psychological difficulties among Arab Americans. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported almost 2,500 incidences of civil rights complaints in 2006, including workplace discrimination, citizenship delays, and “overzealous” government action related to border crossings and terrorism watch lists. These figures, however, have been disputed.

Personally, I haven’t faced harassment, aside from two comments shouted at me in the week after 9/11, a time when I used to wear a Muslim headscarf. Now, because my clothing doesn’t stand out and my last name and that of my husband are not “Muslim-sounding,” I am rarely if ever identified by strangers as a Muslim. And when acquaintances do learn that fact about me, they usually express curiosity rather than hostility. It’s a different story for some of my friends, who wear head scarves or have Arabic or South Asian last names.

Of course, Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. are not the first to experience prejudice and discrimination, and researchers have suggested—though they have not completely proven—that chronic exposure to racism can lead directly to poor health.

So what can Muslim Americans (and people who are mistaken for Muslims Americans, such as Sikhs or Arab American Christians) do to cope with the stress of these heated times?

“People should communicate distress, whether to friends or family members or professionals, so people can offer help,” said Hamid. Noting that post-9/11 government actions against Muslim charities have “decimated” nonprofit organizations that once provided services to Muslim Americans, Hamid urged Muslim communities to reemphasize family networks and other support mechanisms.

And for those who work with or provide services to Muslims? “We should all be aware of our biases and attitudes toward different cultures and ethnicities,” said Hamid. “That self-awareness is the first step to preventing discrimination and poor treatment.”

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In a 2006 study, Ferraro discovered that Baptists, including Southern Baptists, were most likely to be obese, even when geographic factors were controlled for (i.e., it wasn’t just the southern cookin’). “[Conservative] Protestants tend to have the highest BMIs,” he told me when I called him last week. The explanation? Ferraro has several guesses.

One has to do with your outlook on life. More fervent believers tend to see God’s will—rather than personal choice—defining their lives, said Ferraro. Another explanation is that groups like Southern Baptists, which frown on smoking and drinking, may be lax when it comes to restricting food choices. “You can’t abstain from food,” said Ferraro. “It’s a question of what and how much.”

Finally there’s the issue of what you eat when you go to church. “On any Sunday, you could walk into almost any Southern Baptist church in America and enjoy doughnuts and coffee before Sunday School, a potluck [meal] after the morning worship service, or an ice cream social in the evening,” says an article about obesity and the church in the Journal of the Southern Baptist Convention. In other words, high-fat foods are part of the culture.

But whether or not Ferraro’s explanations are right, he also found that church-going is not all bad when it comes to your waistline. For one thing, Ferraro discovered that while women who consumed a lot of religious media—like TV broadcasts of services for example—were heavier, those who attended services in person were not. He also found evidence that when men turn to religion, rather than food, for comfort they are more likely to keep the pounds off.

A Washington Post article this month (authored by a marathon-running pastor) showed that among a growing number of congregations, health is the newest form of ministry. One Baptist megachurch in Houston, for example, has a mission for sports and fitness, with an exercise center, fitness classes, personal trainers and a nutrition program. “We desire that our members develop both spiritually and physically,” says a statement on the church’s website.

Ferraro says he sees the same trend around him in West Lafayette, Ind., where he lives and works. “Some congregations have health clubs that are open to the general public for a modest fee.” That means nonreligious folks stand to benefit from this trend as well: A congregation near you may be offering health-club memberships at half the price of your expensive commercial gym. Ferraro has long urged religious folks to ask themselves some probing questions: “What does my community eat when we get together to celebrate?” “How do we support one another in getting and staying healthy?”

For those already committed to faith and fitness, however, the questions may be more immediate. Is it really possible, for example, as Ohio pastor Mark Brown claims, to combine scripture reading with treadmill workouts? Try it for yourself: Brown’s secret is a large-print Bible.

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Family members had come, and they were great, but they didn’t understand the clinical language that defined our new existence. The doctors and nurses were polite and efficient, but focused on their jobs. A chaplain was someone whose job it was to help me, and, being a religion journalist, I knew I could ask for one.

You might think of a hospital chaplain only as a priest who delivers last rites when a person is dying. In fact, hospital chaplains, who have been around in the U.S. since the 1920s, are resources for all things religious, spiritual, and emotional.

Of course, if you are religiously observant, chaplains can offer you Communion, or light Shabbat candles, or find the right direction for prayer toward Mecca. But chaplains are not just for religious folks, they’re for everybody. That’s what Phil Brooks, manager of the pastoral care department at Inova Fairfax Hospital, where Moses and I stayed, told me when I called him.

“Being in the hospital can be very isolating,” he said. “A chaplain can pull the curtains back on that dark room and help you remember there is more to your life than being a patient.” Brooks explained that lots of times he finds himself simply sitting and listening: “I let them take the lead. I just try to communicate that I am a safe person to talk to, someone with no agenda except their well-being.”

Because many people don’t know about chaplaincy services, or hesitate to call on a chaplain even if one is available, the service is underused, Wendy Cadge, a Brandeis University sociologist who studies religion and health, told me.

Cadge coauthored a new study, out this month, showing that only one-half to two-thirds of hospitals offered chaplaincy services between 1980 and 2003; another study showed that only about 20% of patients see chaplains. “Chaplaincy services are not reimbursed by insurance, so if hospitals hire them, it comes out of their bottom line,” Cadge explained. Or they rely on voluntary efforts from local congregations.

What hospitals might be interested to know is that chaplains can bring a potentially high return on investment. According to a 2003 study from Press Ganey Associates, overall patient satisfaction is closely tied to how well those patients felt their “emotional/spiritual needs” were met during their hospital stay. While doctors and other staff might be able to fill some of those needs, chaplains are the professionals in this area.

When the chaplain arrived in Moses’ room, she was just what I needed: someone wearing normal clothes (not scrubs), who sat with me and asked about Moses, and about me, and said a little prayer with us. I am Muslim, and she was not, but it didn’t seem to matter. I found myself in tears, at last able to express emotions the hospital drama had somehow paralyzed.

So if you find yourself as a hospital patient or, like me, as a caregiver, why not ask the nurse if the chaplain can drop in on you? A little human contact might do you good—no religious beliefs required.

To learn more about coping with an illness and finding support, visit Health.com.

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It’s two days after Easter and I assume many of us are coming down off our sugar hangover. I know I am. I had four Peeps (I LOVE THEM) , two pieces of cake and four cookies in the 36 hours between Good Friday night and Easter morning. Gack. No wonder my jeans don’t fit.

Now that the Easter season is behind us, I want to branch out in th next weeks’ posts and explore prayer beads beyond the Christian tradition. I think we’ll start with Baha’i prayer beads. Stay tuned . . . .