According to some research, strong religious beliefs coupled with a positive relationship with a higher power are connected to lower levels of disordered eating and body image concern. 
Photo by Chris Leipelt on Unsplash
We’ve all experienced negative effects from lack of sleep — exhaustion, blurry vision, depression, irritability. But lack of sleep also interferes with your ability to store memories.
Scientists have long been aware of this connection: Psychologists suggest sleep isolates the brain from the distractions that interrupt memory storage, and neuroscientific research has implied that sleep facilitates “consolidation” — or the brain’s conversion of short-term memory into long-term memory.
But a 2015 study sheds light on what is happening to our memories on a biological level while we sleep.
It’s all about the dopamine. Dopamine regulates the brain’s ability to change as it learns. One of the changes the brain can undergo is forgetting. This study found that when animals were kept awake and stimulated, their brains fired off more and more dopamine, which accelerated their forgetting. But when the animals slept more, the dopamine signalling slowed down and the animals retained memories better.
“Our findings add compelling evidence to support the model that sleep reduces the forgetting signal in the brain, thereby keeping memories intact,” said Ron Davis, chair of the Scripps Research Institute Department of Neuroscience and senior author of the study. “As sleep progresses to deeper levels, dopamine neurons become less reactive to stimuli and this leads to more stable memories.”
So for so many reasons: Get some sleep!
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