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Believe it or not but women who visit Church on a regular basis tend to have a longer lifespan than women who don't, a new study suggests. According to a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, women who attends church once a week live 33 percent longer as compared to women who don't.

"Our results suggest that there may be something important about religious service attendance beyond solitary spirituality," explained Tyler VanderWeele, a professor of epidemiology at the T.H.Chan School of Public Health at Harvard and author of the study, reported CNS News.

"Part of the benefit seems to be that attending religious services increases social support, discourages smoking, decreases depression, and helps people develop a more optimistic or hopeful outlook on life," he added.

For the purpose of the study, Prof VanderWeele and his research team examined data from 74,534 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study from 1992-2012. During the research period, the participants were made to answer questionnaires every two years about their diet, lifestyle, and health and report about their church attendance every four years.

The study found that women who attended religious services more than once per week had 33 percent lower mortality risk and lived an average of five months longer as compared to women who never attended religious services. It was found that those who attended religious services weekly had 26 percent lower risk and those who attended less than once a week had 13 percent lower risk, reported Medical Daily.

The study also found that women who attended religious services once per week or more were 27 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 21 percent less likely to die from cancer, according to NYPost.

However, the researchers noted that the study consisted of mainly white Christians and therefore cannot be generalized to the general population, other countries, or areas with limited religious freedom.

The research findings have been published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal.