The Activity That May Add Many Years to Your Life

New evidence points to churchgoing women living longer lives. (Photo: Stocksy)

Women who pray may want to say an extra “amen” during their next worship service: According to research published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, those who regularly attended religious services — as in more than once a week— were more than 30 percent less likely to die prematurely. And those who attended services more faithfully had a “significantly lower risk” of mortality due to cardiovascular issues (27 percent) or cancer (21 percent).

The researchers studied the data of 74,534 women over the course of 16 years (from 1992 to 2012), questioning subjects about their health and lifestyle every two years while recording certain factors (i.e. alcohol consumption, weight).

As a result, the investigators discovered that the ladies who made their way to church at least once a week lived an average of five months longer compared to those who were less devout.

Related: How Practicing Gratitude Changed the Way I Live My Life

“Attending religious services provides social support, which is beneficial for health,” Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and senior author of the study, tells Yahoo Beauty. “And there appears to be other pathways for the effect of religious service attendance including, for example, social and behavioral norms reducing the likelihood of smoking, and possibly something like a message of hope increasing optimism and decreasing depression.”

He adds that a sense of meaning and a purpose in life mixed with the “development of self-discipline by following common religious practices” may also play a role in longevity.

And while this study focused specifically on white Christian women, VanderWeele points to previous research with different subjects of varying faiths that had similar conclusions.

Related: 20 Quotes Every Strong Woman Needs to Hear

“Prior studies have also found, for men, an association between religious service attendance and lower mortality,” he states. “But the best evidence to date seems to suggest that the association, while present, may not be as strong for men as it is for women. In fact, there has been a study in Israel with a predominantly Jewish population, and in Taiwan where Buddhism and folk religion were the primary forms of religious participation. And these studies likewise found longitudinal associations between service attendance and lower mortality.”

So what about the person who lives a spiritual existence without belonging to a house of worship? In his professional opinion, VanderWeele feels that a longer life expectancy is more linked to the group itself rather than one’s personal belief in God.

“The association between religious participation and mortality probably has more to do with religious practice — and specifically communal practice, like attending religious services — than with spirituality,” he says. “Something about the communal religious experience seems to be powerful for health.”

To back up his claim, VanderWeele states that previous works have shown that private spiritual practices did not have a significant impact on wellbeing. “These things may of course still be important and meaningful within the context of spiritual or religious life, but they do not appear to affect health as strongly,” he says. Preach.

Read This Next: 25 Reasons Red Wine Is Either Healthy or Horrible for You

Let’s keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.