Chris Gunderson — 16 Years of Feeding-Tube Dependence Resolved After Prayer (2011)

Chris Gunderson was diagnosed in infancy with severe gastroparesis — paralysis of the stomach's ability to move food onward. From age 11 months he was fed through a jejunostomy tube, and for 16 years every attempt to transition to oral feeding failed, with vomiting and pain documented across repeated hospitalizations.

In November 2011, at sixteen, Gunderson attended a prayer service in Virginia. A man placed his hands on Gunderson's abdomen and prayed — the practice researchers call proximal intercessory prayer. Gunderson later described a sensation like electricity passing from his shoulder through his stomach. That evening he ate a full meal without symptoms, something he had never done. Four months later his feeding tubes were removed. He has eaten normally since.

The Case Report

In 2019, Complementary Therapies in Medicine published a formal case report by Clarissa Romez, David Zaritzky, and Joshua W. Brown, working with the Global Medical Research Institute (GMRI). The authors reviewed Gunderson's medical records from infancy onward and documented the seven-plus symptom-free years that followed the prayer service. It is one of a very small number of modern healing claims to pass formal peer review with the records on the table.

The Case For and Against

The documentation quality is exceptional for this genre: congenital diagnosis, a 16-year objective baseline (a j-tube cannot be explained by expectancy), abrupt same-day resolution, and durable follow-up, all in the peer-reviewed literature. The natural escape routes are also real: gastroparesis rides on the gut-brain axis, expectancy effects measurably alter GI motility, childhood-onset cases occasionally resolve, and the authors themselves concede that spontaneous resolution at exactly that moment cannot be excluded. GMRI exists to find and publish such cases — assume selection.

This sits among the strongest few modern cases that would violate natural law if true — well above anecdote, well short of proof.