Beauty Sleep Beauty sleep ! How many references to it one hears, and yet how few of the believers in its efficacy put the theory into practice. Beauty: Its Attainment And Preservation. The Butterick Publishing Company 1892 One area of sleep has remained almost unstudied and yet is one of the most widely held beliefs about the importance of sleep, This is the concept of beauty sleep, we all know the phrase and intuitively we know that we need sleep to look our best but now research* from the Karolinska institute in Sweden has proved that beauty sleep does exist. In the experiment ten subjects were photographed on two separate occasions: first after eight hours of normal sleep and then after 31 hours of sleep deprivation. These photographs were independently rated by forty participants for 10 specific facial cues and for signs of fatigue and sadness. The results showed that the faces of sleep-deprived individuals were perceived as having more hanging eyelids, redder eyes, more swollen eyes and darker circles under the eyes. Sleep deprivation also was associated with paler skin, more wrinkles or fine lines and more droopy corners of the mouth. People also looked sadder when sleep-deprived and this sadness was judged t o be related to looking fatigued. Therefore not only does good sleep make you feel good it makes you look good as well. So perhaps it is true, as Tyra Banks, the American model is reputed to have said "the most important item in your make-up bag is a good night's sleep." *Tina Sundelin, Mats Lekander, Göran Kecklund, Eus J. W. Van Someren, Andreas Olsson, John Axelsson. Cues of Fatigue: Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Facial Appearance. SLEEP, 2013; here .