The Washington Times is reporting that researchers from the University of Iowa have discovered a link between church attendance and long life:
"… 12-year study tracking mortality rates of more than 550 subjects older than 65 found that those who attended services at least once a week were 35 percent more likely to live longer than those who never attended church."
They found that:
" Thirty-five percent of the 64 participants who never attended church died before the end of the study.
By comparison, 85.5 percent of participants who went to church twice or more a week survived.
Regular church attendance was associated with lower levels of Interleukin-6, a chemical that can cause arterial damage at elevated levels and is linked to age-related diseases.
Although the researchers acknowledged that regular churchgoers could lead more abstemious lives, they insisted that they had factored these variants into the study by examining a control group of equally healthy non-churchgoers. The variation, they said, had made no appreciable difference."
Okay, well I vote we all go to church at least once at week. Read the entire article here. Hat tip Church Marketing Sucks.