Can Prayer Improve Your Sleep?

When you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you rest, your sleep will be peaceful. PROVERBS 3:24 There is a growing body of research that supports the claim that prayer has a positive impact on sleep. The focus is on how it affects the brain, which is still largely a mystery to science. Neuroplasticity is the study of the brain’s ability to create new neuropathways through thought, emotion, and environmental stimuli. Neurotheology, which is an even more recent area of brain research, is the study of the brain and religion. Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of research at Thomas Jefferson Hospital and Medical College in Pennsylvania and author of How God Changes Your Brain explains: Dr. Christopher Ellison, a researcher at the University of Texas at San Antonio, reviewed several large studies of religious involvement (which included frequency of prayer, religious attendance, and religious importance) and their impact on sleep health (which included overall sleep quality, restless sleep, use of sleep medications). Their findings were published in Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation concluded that people who have higher levels of religious involvement tend to have healthier sleep outcomes than their less religious counterparts. Ellison believes this occurs because of reduced stress, higher social engagement with other members of the church, and lower levels of drug abuse. Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon first coined the term “fight or flight” in the 1920s. This mechanism is an instinctual physiological response to a physically or mentally threatening situation. According to Harvard Health Publishing , the fight or flight response starts with the amygdala, the part of the brain that contributes to emotional processing, sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus communicates with the rest of the body through the nervous system so that the person has […]

Click here to view full article