Dr. Alexander Moreira-Almeida is a leader in the scientific study of spirituality and health.

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Video Clip: And if any of you were troubled, I encourage you to speak out testify.

I’m hoping you can pray for us. Um, we’re soldiers home on leave. And my friends here at troubled Cheever has a very bad back and a broken marriage and he wants to take his own. And Teekay’s wounded in the private parts, which is why he’s lying to his fiance about going to horse.

That’s a scene from the movie, the lucky ones with Rachel McAdams, where she’s seeking a spiritual healing. Which is a topic we touch on with today’s guest, the extraordinarily excellent Dr. Alexander Mordana Almeda,

who is a world-class Brazilian doctor and expert on spirituality and health.

He’s an MD university professor researcher.

And one of the big takeaway messages that he has is that even though we’re conditioned to immediately apply the crazy tag to any connection between spirituality and health. The actual science leads us to the verified fact that there is a connection. Here’s a clip.

Dr. Alexander Moreira-Almeida: [00:01:04] Sometimes of course, there is the dark side of the spirituality, but it’s not the average. On average the use of religion, spirituality is positive, and even has an impact on mortality. Just one example, professor Tyler VanderWeele, he’s a chair of public health at Harvard University is one of the best that statisticians in the world. He has several studies following up on 70,000 to 80,000 people for 10 to 15 years. And showing for example, that the people who attended a religious service at least once a week died 50% less in this 14 year follow-up, or died six times less from suicide. So that is a strong impact.

But now I think the challenge is first to disseminate this information to general population and also in the training of physicians, nurses, and psychologists, because sometimes this knowledge has not been translated into the actual clinical training of health professionals.

And the second challenge, I think perhaps is more even of interest to Skeptiko audience is okay, but what is the meaning of spirituality, because of course we understand that church attendance can be related to social support can be relate to beliefs, but does actually have any ontological reality to this spirituality. Is there something actually beyond the matter? So I think these studies, for example, trying to understand the ultimate source of it, and the meaning of these experiences. I think it’s one of the most interesting challenges we have nowadays.

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So, this is obviously a very complicated issue. So it’s good to know that it’s being tackled by somebody who can handle the complexity. I mean, this is someone who actually earlier in his career.

Researched John of God, you know, the now exposed sex, trafficker rapist, cult leader, murderer, Who was friends with Oprah Winfrey and bill Clinton until an investigative reporter who later was suicided revealed that the whole thing was about.

Sex traffic and other evils that we can only imagine. And that’s something we get into a little bit in this interview, but imagine this worst of the worst,