I enjoyed learning about meditation practice and
finding out that people have their own ways to relax their mind and soul. I
have many topic ideas and it is really hard to narrow it down to just one of
them. Here are a few: how is the lack of public transportation in the US affecting
the physical and psychological health of the American people? Do religious people
have a better quality of life than atheists? Taking vitamin supplements – is it
really good for you? and Overdoing it – hygiene and immunizations in children.
I will consider “Do religious people have a better
quality of life than atheists”? as my example for this blog. I chose this
because I am curious to find out more about the long term positive effects of
pertaining to a certain faith and what are the differences between people who
practice a religious belief system versus people who do not believe in a Higher
Force and think that they have to rely on themselves only to be successful and
healthy. I am more concerned with psychological health in this topic, but also
with physical, such as healing by prayer.
I think there is a lot of opposition to the
statement that religious people have a better quality of life and that might be
coming from groups who practice and value science but are skeptical of trying
something they cannot find evidence for, like the existence of God for example.
Other people might just not believe in anything because they are atheists, but
are healthy and successful, thus they would suggest that there is no need for
faith, since they have everything they need without the help of a Higher Being.
There is strong evidence about the long term positive effects on health of
practicing a religion, especially when we look at old people and we are able to
take into consideration their whole life and how faith contributed to their
wellness. In the past, a lot of doctors disagreed with the power of faith in
healing a diseased, but I am hoping that as I will start doing my research I
would find out that there is some openness regarding this issue. However, in
most cases, doctors think that if they arrived to the conclusion that a certain
pathology cannot be cured, faith would not stand a chance in over passing
science. But, there are cases where faith did cure when there was no hope for
the patient.
This issue might be related to the power of mind and
to the presumption that if we learn how to control our mind, it will lead us to
being in charge of our anatomy and physiology processes, which is very interesting.
An example of having such power over the body is a person who can control
her/his blood pressure by using their mind. However, I believe there is a huge
difference between wishful thinking and actually acting on what we want to
achieve and I want to explore that in my paper.
You are off to an excellent start, Andreea. I love your question about public transportation, especially here in Charlotte where most of us just get in our cars and drive ourselves everywhere. BUT, I also really like your chosen topic, and it's obvious you're interested in it and have done some great thinking about it. Don't be shy to let Donna Gunter know if you have further research questions! And let me know if you want to talk through whether some of your sources are credible; this is a tricky topic. Sometimes you can use less credible sources if you couch them correctly in your writing.
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