Does Praying Really Do Anything?

[mandy]

Right now I'm sure I believe in it all and hell just froze over because I agree with everything Alf has posted.

I'm frightened.......

[HAL]

Understood. Tell me a story.

[mandy]

I said HELL, not HAL! Where did you come from???

[rand corp]

Randy Newman - God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind) Lyrics

Cain slew Abel, Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel were to multiply
Why must any of the children die?
So he asked the Lord
And the Lord said:

Man means nothing, he means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower
Or the humblest Yucca tree
He chases round this desert
'Cause he thinks that's where I'll be
That's why I love mankind

I recoil in horror fro the foulness of thee
From the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That's why I love mankind

The Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree
The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV
They picked their four greatest priests
And they began to speak
They said, "Lord, a plague is on the world
Lord, no man is free
The temples that we built to you
Have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won't take care of us
Won't you please, please let us be?"
And the Lord said
And the Lord said

I burn down your cities-how blind you must be
I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we
You all must be crazy to put your faith in me
That's why I love mankind
You really need me
That's why I love mankind

[foxychick]

I do believe praying does stuff i've had some really weird stuff happen so i have every reason to believe cos it's really freaky

if u believe or not it's nice to think that someone is out there listening to u and ur burdens if ur feeling hurt or whatever. It's up to the person but from experience i believe prayer does do something

[Blanch]

[HAL]

I think I do.

[Eunos]

Can we start a new cult?
I reckon we could all become devotees of Hal.
We already believe in Hal.
We need only start praying to him.
After all, he is real, isn't he?


"Oh great Hal. Please deliver a Premiership to CFC in the year 2005"

There, I've prayed to the great one.
I'll just sit back and await the result.

.

[Dr Alf Andrews]

Hal will always answer your prayer ...

... but don't expect the answer to make any sense

[London Dave]

[rand corp]

[Beth]

[Blanch]

I'll say a prayer for the 2 of you to relax a little

Pride is a big thing....even on the net!

[rand corp]

Haa ha ha, priceless Assassin!
My apologies, I certainly didn�t see that one coming but, in 20 years of working in the world wine market, working with over 20 countries and working in over 15 of them, I have never once been called a drug dealer for working in the wine industry.

I salute you, not so much for the uniqueness of the comment but for the gross generalization and for the sheer, ignorant stupidity of the remark.

The fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with this thread is pertinent, that you have attacked me personally without debating any particular point of reference in this thread, instead that you went to my details page, found out what I do for a living and chose to attack me personally (without knowing me at all) is quite strange really.

Perhaps what I should have researched was your previous posts before inviting you to undertake an intelligent discussion obviously, this is well beyond your capacity.

You suggest that I have plenty of spare time and should do some research on the drug I promote. FYI, in my work with the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation and the Australian Wine Export Council I have published scores of papers, articles and letters on wine and health and wine�s historical role in society. I have delivered hundreds of speeches on the topic. I have worked with Dr. Phillip Norrie and others in seminars on such topics as wine history and wine health and participated in research and work undertaken by the Australian Wine Research Institute and the Winemakers Federation of Australia.

I won�t bore the reader here with vast tracts of my work in this area by posting too much hear. Needless to say, that should you actually require informed opinion on this matter I will gladly send it to you personally.

I will simply pass on a couple of points that may enlighten the interested reader.

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.
Thomas Jefferson

In Vino Veritas (In wine is truth),
Plato

"Wine is the thinking person's health drink" Dr Philip Norrie

"Wine is the most healthful and hygienic of beverages" Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French scientist

"Whether wine is a nourishment, medicine or poison, is a matter of dosage" Paracelsus (1493-1541), a German physician and father of modern pharmacology. Also, the doctor who gave us the word 'alcohol'.

"People who drink wine have the lowest death from all causes rate" Dr Philip Norrie

No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God. - Plato

"We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."
- Ben Franklin

"I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax
on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens."
Thomas Jefferson

"I rejoice as a moralist at the prospect of a reduction of the duties
on wine by our national legislature.... Its extended use will carry
health and comfort to a much enlarged circle."
Thomas Jefferson

"In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary."
- Ernest Hemingway," A Moveable Feast'

"Wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile."
- Homer, "Odyssey (9th c. B.C.)

Wine is the oldest medicine known to man, having been used by doctors since Egyptian times. It has been used as an anaesthetic, anaemia treatment and antiseptic; to cool fevers and relieve constipation, as a digestive aid, hypnotic, sedative, tonic, water purifier and a medium for blending less palatable medicines.

Famous physicians such as the Greek, Hypocrites (450-370 BC), (yes he of the Hippocratic Oath), the Romans Celsus (25 BC-37 AD), and Galen (131-201 AD), and the Arabs Rhazes (820-932 AD) and Avicenna (980-1032 AD), known as the 'Prince of Physicians', thought highly of wine as a medicine and were great advocates of its use. It was these early doctors who wrote about the different wines of their time - they were the original wine writers and critics.

Australia has a long and unique history of 'medical-vignerons' or 'wine doctors'. The first two were from opposite ends of the social spectrum. In 1818 at his property 'Campbellfields' near Campbelltown, south west of Sydney, Dr William Redfern established a vineyard.

Dr Redfern had been transported to Sydney in 1801 for advising mutineers on board HMS Standard, while serving as a Naval surgeon.

At the other end of Sydney and the social scale was Sir John Jamison, past surgeon to the King of Sweden's fleet. He planted his vineyard at Penrith, on a property he named 'Regentville', after his close friend the Prince Regent, later King George the 4th.

Other wine-doctors followed, many establishing vineyards to make wine for their patients. More than 160 wine-doctors including the founders of some of Australia's largest and best known wine companies such as Lindemans, Penfolds, Hardys, Angoves, Stanley, Houghtons and Minchinbury established vineyards.

The red elixir
(Age)

Every time an article appears promoting the health benefits of wine, Creina Stockley braces herself for an avalanche of calls from the media.

For the past 14 years, Stockley has worked for The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) in Adelaide, collating information from around the world on the many health benefits of moderate wine drinking.

"I receive information about new research findings on a weekly basis," says Stockley. "Many doctors and cardiologists are very up front about their belief that wine has many heart-friendly benefits because of the massive body of research available, which dates back to the early 20th century. Because of my work I know many cardiologists and, when I meet someone socially and they start extolling the virtues of flavonoids in the fight against plaque build-up on artery walls, I can often pinpoint who their cardiologist is."

Her tenure at AWRI and authorship of papers such as "Evaluating the Evidence of Wine's Cardioprotection" has given Stockley a helicopter view of a health trend, which has gathered steam since the US program 60 Minutes focused the world's attention on the so-called French Paradox in 1991.

A French study discovered that in areas of France where the diet is high in fat, those who drank red wine with meals had a lower incidence of heart attacks than in other parts of the world.

In retrospect, the evidence was inconclusive but it opened the floodgates for researchers worldwide to study which components in red wine could be responsible.

"There was a massive increase in red wine sales after the 60 Minutes show in both Australia and the US, which was repeated when it was re-aired a few years later," says Stockley. "Science still has a long way to go to achieve a full understanding of how specific compounds like resveratrol - the main subject of most studies - work and are absorbed by the body. That said, there is no doubt that wine has beneficial aspects that have long been known by empirical observation. Hippocrates recommended wine as a diuretic in 450BC. In fact, wine is the oldest prophylactic and medicine still in regular use."

Although she works closely with the wine industry, Stockley also has a close relationship with state and federal health authorities, and says that nothing should obscure the fact that prolonged alcohol consumption is detrimental to health.

"We don't encourage people to start drinking wine, but they shouldn't miss out on something that might lower their risk of heart disease either." And that's the moral dilemma that has also dogged research into the benefits of wine.

Even though Australia's national alcohol consumption dropped by 25 per cent from 1980 to 2004, it is estimated that binge drinking costs the economy $7.6 billion a year in lost productivity, absenteeism, injuries, death and disease. There is also considerable international debate on what constitutes moderate drinking.

Australia and the US consider that it's one glass a day for women and two glasses for men. But the UK and the European Union up the "sensible limit" to two to three daily glasses for women and three to four for men. The World Health Organisation's guidelines for safe drinking levels are: four glasses a day for men and two for women, abstaining from alcohol for at least two days a week.

But there's no ignoring the mountain of evidence that moderate consumption of red wine in particular may decrease the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke and now lung cancer.

In late October last year, scientists at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain revealed that - at least in men - red wine decreased the risk of lung cancer by 13 per cent. Again, resveratrol, the most studied antioxidant found in red wine, along with resveratrol and tannins was found to be the main agent offering protective benefits.

Resveratrol is found in the seeds and skins of grapes, and red wine preserves more of it than white wine because grape skins and seeds are fermented with the grape juice for longer periods in the wine-making process.

Resveratrol is also a phyto-oestrogen. Some researchers believe that as little as one glass of red wine a day may guard against oestrogen depletion in the body, thereby protecting against conditions linked to a decrease in natural oestrogen in women including menopause, breast cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease.

As early as the 1970s, the famous Framingham Heart Study reported that moderate alcohol consumption produced a 50 per cent reduction in the rate of coronary heart disease. But the US government suppressed the information because they thought that it would give an official green light to drinking. Since then dozens of studies - from the Busselton and Dubbo studies in Australia through to the groundbreaking studies at Kaiser Permanente by Dr Arthur Klatsky and the large scale Nurses Health Study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, which tracked 100,000 women over 14 years - have confirmed and extended those findings.

The most likely reason - absolute proof is still lacking - is that resveratrol has blood-thinning properties that prevent individual blood cells from sticking to each other, reducing the formation of blood clots in smaller blood vessels which can lead to heart attacks and stroke.

Resveratrol has also been shown to slow the oxidation of low-density lipoproteins, which slows the production of plaque, the prime cause of artherosclerosis. Flavonoids, or catechins, also found in red wine, fight the formation of free radicals - rogue cells that can lead to cellular damage.
Resveratrol has also been shown to reduce the effects of scarring from radiation treatments. One of the main reasons it is now being regularly included in cosmetic creams from companies like Estee Lauder and Caudalie, a French skincare brand that is based on vinotherapie - a fancy name for a high resveratrol content. Other medical studies point to the role of resveratrol, flavonoids and other antioxidants found in red wines in lowering the risk of colo-rectal tumours, prostate cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and even the common cold.

So how does resveratrol fight cancer? Researchers believe that it minimises DNA mutations that cause cancer and also blocks the formation of new blood cells that nourish tumours.

But what if you are one of the many people who suffer from migraine after drinking red wine? Worry not. Two years ago, a group of French scientists developed a wine called Paradoxe Blanc, enriched with extra antioxidants. And if you prefer your chardonnay as is, researchers at the University of Buffalo found that white wine drinkers had greater lung function than red wine consumers.

Beer has also weighed into the alcohol for health debate. Working separately, researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Jersualem discovered that a glass of beer a day can also combat heart disease. The Canadians discovered that a glass of beer or wine produced an equal increase in antioxidants even though the wine contained more polyphenols than beer. The Israelis also found that men with coronary heart disease who ate a fruit-and-vegetable-rich diet and drank one lager beer a day lowered their damaging cholesterol and reduced natural clot-making compounds in the blood. A control group who drank mineral water experienced no changes for the better.

For those who can't drink alcohol for health or religious reasons, there is grape juice that delivers resveratrol without the alcohol. In fact a study at the University of California, Davis, found that the antioxidants present in grape juice stayed in the body longer than those found in wine. And if you don't like the taste of grape juice - switch to cranberry juice. Researchers at Laval University in Quebec revealed that cranberry juice shielded the heart better than red wine or grape juice.

"A little of what you fancy can do you good is the road to follow," says Creina Stockley. "One drink is good but three is not better."

Visit the website of The Australian Wine Research Institute - awri.com.au - for more information on wine and health benefits.

Who Should Not Drink
� Children and adolescents
� Women who are pregnant.
� Individuals unable to keep their drinking to moderate levels
� People using certain prescription drugs. Check with your doctor.

[Eunos]

That must rate as the longest post ever written on Nicks.

As for me, I hate wine.