While the strong metaphysical linkage between Eastern religiosity, its psycho-spiritual practices, and health may offer important new perspectives on the relationship between religiosity and health, there are a number of practical difficulties associated with studying the epidemiology of non-Western forms of spirituality. These include:
- differing criteria of religiosity
- new confounding variables relating to language, culture, ethnicity, diet and environment
- an absence of validated and reliable measures
- accurate data regarding the background population may be unavailable.
Given these considerable limitations, the study of a Western sub-population that has adopted a well-defined aspect of Eastern religiosity may be particularly useful as it allows comparison with well-developed, validated databases and commentary while avoiding a number of the confounders mentioned above. Studies such as this may provide important conceptual bridges by which researchers can extend their understandings of the relationship between religiosity and health in non-Western groups using a common set of empirical scientific tools.