London - If you think the term “beauty sleep” is a bit antiquated, think again – the old-fashioned term has just gained credentials, thanks to a medical study in Sweden.
After studying 10 people, researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute found that an adequate night’s sleep helps make a person look more attractive.
Without sleep, participants exhibited drooping eyes and wrinkled faces.
Each participant was kept awake for 31 hours and, according to the study, their appearance took a noticeable nosedive as a result.
Forty “observers” compared before and after photos of the study’s 10 sleep-deprived participants.
They noticed that the subjects had developed swollen eyelids, bloodshot eyes, and dark circles under their eyes after going without sleep for more than a day.
“We confirmed that sleep-deprived people are perceived as more fatigued, less attractive, sadder, and less healthy than when they are rested,” researchers wrote in their findings, which were published in the medical journal Sleep.
Study participants also exhibited more wrinkles, which research team leader Tina Sundelin attributed to the fact that “when you sleep the blood flow to your skin increases dramatically… it thus seemed likely that sleep loss would affect the skin”.
They claim their study’s results confirm “the colloquial notion of beauty sleep”.
But more than appearance, sleep deprivation affected the study participants’ moods. Observers felt that they had developed droopy frowns, which was interpreted as a sign of sadness and mental fatigue.
Sundelin says that “sleep loss is indeed related to a negative mood… we also seem to be more emotional when we don’t get enough sleep”.
It is easy to observe the effects of sleep deprivation on a human’s face because faces, Sundelin said, “contain a lot of information on which humans base their interactions with each other. How fatigued a person appears may affect how others behave towards them.” – Daily Mail