The healthcare professionals deserve a lot of credit - and thanks. But I don't believe the entire reason for heathier missionaries is due to their efforts as the article implies.

It has been my experience that missionaries today (as a general group) are much more spiritual and better prepared than at any time in the past. They start their missions healthier. They know how to take care of themselves better.

The missionaries today have met a higher standard. They can better commune with the spirit and know what is best. They also recieve the blessings of the spirit more often because they are on a higher righteousness/spituality plane than missionaries were a couple decades ago.

I think the article should've mentioned these blessings also as reasons for healthier missionaries.

Lets not forget that the church does not send out as many people with health issues as before. Not only was the bar raised regarding spiritual health, but physical as well.

I am having a hard time with the statement that "The daily rate of illness among LDS missionaries has dropped from 38 percent two decades ago to .2 percent today,"
Maybe the author meant to say that the daily rate of illness has dropped 38 percent to 0.2 percent.
I was on my mission in Brazil two decades ago and I wasn't sick 38 percent of the time. The other missionaries I knew weren't that sick either. The biggest sickness was homesickness which aflicted a few that really didn't want to be there.

Our son is a missionary now, and our family has used alternative health care all of his life. Thus, our focus was on prevention of disease rather than treatment of disease. I sent some natural remedies with him, along with his vitamins and other supplements. He was a football player and weight lifter and had always worked at physically demanding jobs while earing money for his mission. His mission is in Russia, where the food and water can be a challenge at times, but he has been serving there since January and has been basically healthy the whole time. I think that if we follow the Word of Wisdom and try to use common sense, we can all be more healthy.