Photo: Matthew Henry
Beauty Sleep. Classic Health-Indicator Gets Some Science Respect:
To err on the lighter side of things this time, we have another installment of HealthTrekker’s “Old Myths That Turn Out To Be True”-series.
A long time ago, there used to be a pseudo-science called Phrenology.
It said you could tell who someone was by the bumps on their skull.
And a new, actually-legit version of that idea for Faces is the tease that leads to the newest science-based discovery,
That Manchester researchers have found yet another indicator of health & good life choices and practices, in your face…
Facial-Aging Turned Out To Be A Good Indicator:
So in a post a few years ago, modern phrenology found its new home in this study based on Faces.
And it turned out to be a reasonable conclusion
The healthier someone looked, the healthier they Actually turned out to be.
It also suggested that, as you might guess, the older the perceived-age for someone vs. their real age,
The less healthy they turned out to be, and the higher their risk for early-mortality.
So where does that leave the current work?
The Short Answer is that a strong component of health,
The amount and quality of the Sleep you get, is visible in your facial appearance,
And may also change it and other structural parts of your body if that quality & quantity suffers.
Read on to find out the details…
Sleep-Deprivation Is Generally Not A Good Look:
Well, it’s not an accident that your general-health seems to show up in your face.
And as many times we’ve discussed how important sleep is,
Including the very-likely fountain-of-youth & brain-health that is Naps,
It’s not surprising that the amount & quality of Sleep you get also shows up in your face as well.
There was even a study on how sleep-deprived people generally have a look that is off-putting and causes avoidance in others,
Resulting in social isolation.
Karolinska Finds Bad Sleep Readily-Apparent & Off-Putting:
And a sister-study to that was done a short while ago at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
In that work, 25 university students between the ages of 18-31 were asked not to drink alcohol for 48 hours,
And also to get a good night’s sleep of 8 hours for two nights in a row.
After that, they had to restrict their sleep for 2 nights to only 4 hours a night.
They then had their pictures taken all at the same distance with a neutral facial-expression,
With no makeup and simple hairstyles for the women.
It Even Made Young People Look Less-Attractive:
These photos were then shown to more than 60 strangers.
Who then rated their attractiveness and health.
All of them were judged to be both less-attractive and less-healthy by those strangers.
Just like the other work on sleep-deprived people,
The lead-author of the Karolinska study also speculated that their appearance could lead to social-isolation,
By inspiring subconscious Disease-Avoiding Behaviors in people who looked at them.
The Current Study Deep-Dives How Sleep Affects Your Body-Structure:
Now for the most current work, we have a set of results that heaps even more-negatives on that problem.
You might have guessed that sleep-deprivation is not great, and that if Tony Schwartz is right in suggesting sleep is more important than food,
It must be making some Actual Changes in you as-well.
Well, you would be right.
One of the most fundamental pieces of bio-math we all have inside is the Circadian Clock.
And there are crazy bio-tech watchmakers who study it.
In the same vein of those previous researchers we talked about, they have found that Beauty Sleep is probably a real thing.
A Lack Of Sleep Tears Down More Than Just Your Mind:
So, biologists calculate that about 1/4 of our total body-mass is a special kind of protein called Collagen.
It’s that stuff you hear about in fancy face-creams with Hyaluronic Acid, that’s supposed to make you look young.
And consequently-enough, the total amount you will ever have will be formed by the time you get to be about 17.
But what we didn’t know until now, is that there are 2 types of this protein that does a big job of holding your entire body together.
Those 2 are classified based on their diameter. One thick, one thinner that’s 1/4 the size of the big ones.
Collagen Discovery. Two Different Support-Cables That Hold You Together:
Now here’s where things get interesting and weird.
The thick ones stay unchanged.
But the thin ones break all the time, throughout the day…
And are Supposed to be replenished & rebuilt At Night!
So to test the idea of what might happen when we get bad sleep,
The researchers tested mice with disrupted body-clocks over the course of about 2 days.
What they found is that mice whose clocks were off, had both types of fibers that had gone haywire,
And regenerated & tangled-up in absolutely-random ways not typical of someone who routinely-gets good sleep.
Prior + Current Studies = The Truth About Beauty Sleep:
So: Now if you marry these findings with the previous-studies that all suggest that health and sleep irregularities will show up in the Face,
Not only in the form of the “Panda Eyes” dark circles or circulatory-tells,
But in a somewhat subtly-disrupted appearance,
You arrive not only at the possible conclusion that we all need good sleep just to plain hold our physical structure together,
But this can actually manifest itself Right In Our Facial-appearance, as a disruption in the smooth structures of convexity that is supposed to be holding it up at almost every-level.
Now just think of how many times those billions of small-size fibers are replenished in odd, irregular and strange ways,
And how much that can add-up,
You might just arrive at the old wives’ tale that Beauty Sleep is actually a very real thing!
References & Links:
• Source: MU
• Source Studies:
1) Nature.CellBio – Circadian control of the secretory pathway maintains collagen homeostasis
2) BMJ – Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people
3) Age&Aging – Influence of environmental factors on facial ageing
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