You are only as attractive as your sleep quality
02-12-2013
So it seems that you look as bad on the outside as you feel on the inside when you do not have a good night’s sleep. Yes, it turns out that you are only as attractive as your sleep quality, beauty sleep is a real thing. Of course there has been a study by scientists that has found that people who have had less sleep are less attractive than well rested people.
The study
The study was published in the respect journal Sleep and it found that people with sleep-deprived faces look less attractive – in that they have redder and more swollen eyes, more wrinkles, dark under-eye circles and droopier eyelids – than people who have slept well.
The researchers point out that the first form humans learn to recognise is the face and that over our lives we become extremely skilled at reading faces. We are able to detect minute changes on a person’s face and this means that we find it extremely easy to detect if someone has slept well or not.
Less attractive
The researchers also point out that finding people who have not slept as well less attractive could possibly have something to do with human evolution. In essence, someone with bad sleep health may have other underlying issues and therefore is not an ideal mate.
How did they find this out?
The study was based on 10 people. These people had photographs taken of them at 2:30 p.m. after they had a full night’s sleep. They then had photos taken of them after they had gone for over 30 hours without any sleep.
The researchers then had 40 study participants look at these 20 photographs and rate them based on a number of factors including tiredness, sadness and attractiveness. It is not hard to see why the pictures of the people after 30 hours of being awake were rated lower on the attractiveness scale than those when they’d had a good night’s sleep. In the sleep-deprived photos the subjects all had larger dark under-eye circles, much paler skin, and even droopy corners of the mouth.
Why do we look less attractive?
When we sleep our bodies are hard at work. There are many processes that occur during sleep, from memory storage through to fluid transportation. The reason we look less than our best when we have not slept much or well is that we have not undergone the process of fluid transportation that would leave us looking refreshed.
The puffy eyes that we get is one of the most pronounced aspects of this lack of sleep. The longer we go without sleep the puffier the area under the eyes get. When we sleep the body is able to remove the fluid, leaving us looking bright eyed and bushy tailed.
Get more sleep
The moral of the story is that if you want to look your best you need to get a good night’s sleep each and every night. Don’t burn the candle at both ends as you will end up less attractive, which has been scientifically proven.
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