Sleep and beauty
Sleeping Beauty beyond the fairytale…
With much of our time being spent on video calls now, it’s even more confronting when you catch a look at your video square on the gallery, and find yourself thinking 😬
“You look tired.”
There are times when even the industrial-strength concealer doesn’t help, and you know you’ve had a hellish week with very little shut-eye, but…
Can a single sleepless night make you less attractive? And how much less sleep will impact how you look physically?
There has been some research done on this, believe it or not!
We know how vital sleep is for health and well-being. Many studies now support the importance of sleep in healing, reproductive health, immune function, weight management, brain function, and even the ability to regulate your emotions.
Even so, most of us think nothing of blowing off the occasional hour or two of sleep to watch our favorite Netflix series or stay up flicking through our social feeds, but once you know the facts, you might choose otherwise.
Sleep and skin health
Sleep impacts several facial qualities, including skin health.
A study published in clinical and experimental dermatology (2015) found that good sleepers (7-9hrs) had lower skin ageing scores and a higher skin barrier recovery after injury up to 30% better than poor sleepers.
A key point here, you have a certain amount of free radical damage that occurs from exposure to environmental pollutants daily this leads to ageing and ensuring your sleep is solid is a key component to help you avoid premature ageing.
Sleep and attractiveness
But what if I told you that a lack of sleep could harm how others perceive you socially? And even affect how much social attention you receive? What if a lack of sleep reduced your attractiveness?
Tina Sundelin and her team of scientists showed photos of sleep-deprived and non-sleep deprived subjects to participants in her study. They were then asked to rate the faces in the images for attractiveness, health and trustworthiness.
The results? Those who were sleep-deprived were perceived as being:
Less healthy
Less attractive and subjects may have felt less likely to want to interact with them socially.
There didn’t seem to be any significant changes in perceived trustworthiness.
How much sleep deprivation was used for this study??
2 nights of being limited to only 5 hours of sleep.
That's right, a couple of rough nights and you're going to be impacting how your peers see you. It’s really not a lot.
As a naturopath, I've seen sleep complaints in my patients' skyrocket during the COVID pandemic . With even the best sleepers struggling.
Counselling around sleep and developing individual protocols around light exposure, emotional stressors and other factors that impact a good nights sleep is a significant component of clinical practice.
You can take all the beauty supplements you like but there really is no substitute for a good nights sleep.
One of the most challenging issues when it comes to sleep is learning how to compartmentalise. So knowing how to park a thought that isn't helpful right now?
One of the key reported issues from people who struggle to sleep is that they have too many circulating thoughts right at bedtime. As a result, the to-do list for the next day keeps going around and around. Or the re-living of conversations from the day.
Understanding you’re human and this is something we all struggle with from time to time and learning how to effectively compartmentalise is key to your sleep but also to overcoming anxiety.
This is where using your body can make a huge difference!
That's right, I said, use your body. It's very challenging to talk the mind out of overthinking, so use your breathing or some simple movement practice like yin yoga.
You can consider a guided visualization or hypnotherapy recording that will help to keep your mind anchored on the present moment and eventually hopefully allow you to drift off.
Studies have shown the worst things you can do:
Sit on your device with the light exposure
and staring at the clock. Clock-watchers took at least a half-hour longer to fall asleep in one study.
If anxiety and stress is an issue for you, please consider getting some professional support from your health care practitioner. There is a lot you can do using both herbal medicine and hypnotherapy to get you sleeping better.
If you’ve found yourself reading this article and thinking to yourself, ‘yes I know that already’ I want to take this opportunity to encourage you to reflect on your current sleep habits and be honest about whether you’re implementing the necessary changes to ensure you’re sleeping well.