Christian faith and the public health emergency

Peter Phillips asks whether the mounting public health emergency in the UK has a spiritual solution.

We lament the fact that the health of our nation is declining among younger as well as older people. This trend is despite many advances in medical science and relatively good control of communicable diseases. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular disease, cancers, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes, are increasing in prevalence at an alarming rate. About 40 per cent of the burden on health services in England may be preventable through actions targeted at these chronic conditions. [1]

Jesus clearly wanted the best for us in his commands: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.”’ (Matthew 22:36-39)

The Apostle Paul writes: ‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.’ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

Isaiah also observed that people who have fallen away from following God’s laws, ‘have harps and lyres at their banquets, pipes and tambourines and wine, but they have no regard for the deeds of the Lord, no respect for the work of his hands’. (Isaiah 5:12) We are part of the work of God’s hands and have a duty to look after ourselves.

Given what we know about improving health, how can Christian healthcare professionals more effectively show the love of God to their patients by helping them improve their health? Let’s look at the current position as a backdrop for this mission.

recent health trends

Geriatricians and gerontologists have long debated whether they could delay and compress the period of chronic illness and disability in their patients. However, a recent publication in Journals of Gerontology shows that the opposite scenario has occurred in cohorts born between 1946 and 1964, who are less healthy than their parents were. The deterioration in health was worse in Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980. [2] The study of populations in England, Europe, and the US provides evidence that Generation X have a higher burden of chronic disease than the 1946 to 1964 cohort. Longer lifespans do not explain the increase in illness because obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases are affecting more people at younger ages. The study found that adults were more likely to have cancer, lung disease, heart problems, and high cholesterol as they entered middle age. The study’s authors comment that ‘Even with advances in medicine and greater public awareness about healthy living, people born since 1945 are at greater risk of chronic disease and disability than their predecessors.’ [3]

Since Roman times, average life expectancy has increased due to a reduction in infant mortality rates (from 250-500 per 1,000 to three per 1,000), [4] improved living conditions, and reductions in communicable diseases. We have been accustomed to hearing that average life expectancy continues to increase. However, figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that projections of an increase in average life expectancy are starting to fall. [5]

Marmot Review of Public Health

The review, ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ – led by Michael Marmot and published in 2010, set out the policy objectives to improve public health in England, including education, employment, housing, and prevention of ill health.

‘Ten years since the publication of The Marmot Review, for the first time in more than 100 years, life expectancy has failed to increase across the country, and for the poorest 10 per cent of women, it has actually declined. Over the last decade, health inequalities have widened overall, and the amount of time people spend in poor health has increased since 2010.’ [6]

Marmot showed that chronic disease was associated with social deprivation. However, this does not explain why these diseases are also increasing among the more affluent.

obesity

Recent figures from England show that almost three-quarters of the population aged 45 to 74 are overweight or obese. The figures are a little lower in earlier decades, including childhood. [7]

type 2 diabetes

Being overweight or obese are the main risk factors for type 2 diabetes. By 2025, it is estimated that there will be about five million cases of type 2 diabetes in the UK, compared with 1.3 million cases in England and Wales in 2005. Numbers are increasing in under 40s and in children. Another one million cases are thought to be undiagnosed. [8, 9]

cancer

Because cancer is a disease of old age, an increase in cancer cases would be expected due to our ageing population. However, there has also been an increase in cancer incidence in younger age groups. Figures from Cancer Research UK for the period 1995 to 2019 show an increase in cancer diagnosis of 33 per cent in those aged 25 to 49, compared to a 10 per cent increase in those over 75. Breast cancer in women, melanoma, and bowel cancer are the top three most frequent types of cancer in the 25-49 age group. [10]

Tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, diets high in red meat and processed foods (high in fat, refined sugar, salt, preservatives, and colourings with fibre and B vitamins removed), obesity, physical inactivity, air pollution, the overuse of antibiotics affecting the microbiome, and genetics are all risk factors. The association between some cancers and obesity is well described in articles from the US National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK. [11, 12] Cancer is generally about twice as common in the obese and overweight compared to those of normal weight. [13, 14]

cardiovascular disease (CVD)

Deaths in the under seventy-fives due to heart disease have risen to the highest level in a decade. In 2022, 39,000 died prematurely in England of heart attacks and stroke. This is the highest annual death rate since 2008 and a reversal of the previous downward trend in CVD death rates over the previous 60 years.

Age-standardised premature death rates, which account for changes and differences in population sizes and demographics, show similar trends. Before 2012, the number and rate of deaths from these conditions in those under the age of 75 were falling, in part thanks to decades of medical and scientific breakthroughs. The reasons for this change include a generally less healthy population after the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of Covid infection, climbing obesity rates, and increasing pressure on the NHS. [15]

discussion and conclusions

Clearly, research shows that the prevalence of these chronic conditions is increasing in all age groups.

Government figures confirm that rates of chronic, non-communicable diseases are on the rise. There is still a long shadow cast by the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase from 2 million people out of the labour force with long-term sickness in 2019 to 2.8 million in April 2024. A rise in mental health problems, notably anxiety and depression, particularly in young people, is a major contributory factor. There are still 7.6 million people on waiting lists for NHS treatment, and the NHS workforce is weary.

The ray of hope is that an estimated 40 per cent of the burden on health services in England may be preventable through action on the determinants of avoidable chronic conditions. [16, 17]

Are we willing to accept that the upward trend in patients with chronic conditions is evidence of deteriorating national health? The tendency to deny such inconvenient truths may be partly due to addiction to creature comforts and reluctance to change.

Dan Strange, preaching from Isaiah 40-44 at the 2024 CMF National Conference, and in his book Plugged In, describes how we have become blinded to the presence of the idols that have become embedded into our culture. His concluding chapter on the Japanese domestic toilet demonstrates the lengths people will go to worship the physical comfort of having clean, warm, and dry bottoms! [18] What we regard as a normal way of living may not be how God intended us to live. God did not design us to be sedentary and to eat junk foods. Both of these factors contribute to our failing health.

Am I being too radical for my readers in suggesting that we are sleepwalking into a public health emergency that is worsening by the day as a result of normalising unhealthy ways of living?

Paul says: ‘Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things’. (Philippians 3:19)

Perhaps eating has become a god for some of us. If so, we need to repent and change our ways.

Long-term change to healthier ways of living requires willpower and an acceptance of personal responsibility. We find, to our surprise, that regular exercise, eating healthy foods, avoiding junk foods and grazing between meals, reducing alcohol intake, and stopping smoking all result in our feeling happier, healthier, and more energetic. Lifestyle modification to reduce weight is safe, cheap, and effective in the long term and has no side effects, which is more than can be said for the likes of semaglutide. [19] The availability of such medication can also absolve overweight people from their responsibility to do something to improve their health.

‘Hang on’, I hear you say, ‘What about the underlying anxiety, depression and other mental health problems which lead to comfort eating and binging on junk foods?’ I agree it is a complex issue that requires the utmost compassion and sensitivity. Is it possible to lead people to more constructive ways of dealing with their mental health problems? Exercise, for those who can manage it, is energising and improves low mood.

Unless we change course, there will be more avoidable illness and suffering, as well as mounting demand on our increasingly overstretched and costly health service. [20] Based on the current NHS budget, avoidable illness probably costs us in the UK about £100 billion per year, and that’s apart from the associated cost of social care and lost productivity in the workforce.

Thank you for staying with me thus far, as you may be wondering what this has to do with Christian faith. From our perspective as patients, I expect that Jesus, by his commandments, would discourage us from following a path of unhealthy living towards higher and higher levels of illness. What would Jesus do and say to us in response to this situation?

For us as Christian healthcare professionals, I believe Jesus would expect us to encourage our patients to avoid harming themselves by the way they live. In addition to treating our patients with love and respect, we can call on psychological methods to help guide patients through the difficult process of change.

last but not least, what are the effects of Christian faith on health?

There is a growing body of evidence that those who practise a Christian faith are more likely to experience better spiritual, mental, and physical health. Not only may God answer prayer about health issues (albeit in his own way in his own time), but the practice of prayer may improve our mental outlook towards the challenges we face so that we might be better able to cope with illness.

This excerpt from Alex Bunn and David Randall’s 2011 CMF file on the health benefits of Christian faith expands on this:

‘Evidence from over 1,200 studies and 400 reviews has shown an association between faith and a number of positive health benefits, including protection from illness, coping with illness and faster recovery from it. Of the studies reviewed in the definitive analysis, 81 per cent showed benefit and only 4 per cent harm.’ [21]

Showing people the love of Jesus through Christian outreach can, in some cases, be transformative. Alpha courses, lunch clubs, top-up shops, parent and toddler groups, youth groups, and church cafes are meeting needs and changing lives.

However, our faith does not guarantee health and prosperity. Whether we like it or not, and no matter how healthy our lifestyles are, we may still suffer from illness. We may pray to God for relief from whatever is afflicting us, and sometimes God says ‘no’ because suffering is there to help us to be more like Jesus, who died for us on the cross. As the Apostle Paul writes:

‘Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong’. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

I pray that Christian healthcare professionals will play a leading role in helping our patients live more healthy lives by working with other agencies and government initiatives. What do you think? ›