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Health, Life&Style, Time Management

XXI Century Sleeping Beauty

No doubt, most of you have heard about the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty or at least seen its Walt Disney interpretation as kids or adults. Fair Aurora as the embodiment of beauty, kindness, and grace is the character modern girls, both little and grown-up, can learn much from. Let’s see what is hidden behind the story symbolism and what sleep can stand for from the present-day perspective.

The XXI century is the age of action, its logo is something like ‘grasp your piece of the cake and go on rushing’. There is no time to waste on reflections. Nor there is time for sleeping…
Isn’t it strange that we have forgotten who we are? The modern Homo sapiens looks more like a perpetuum mobile than a living organism. This lifestyle seems to be very convenient until one realizes that something has started to go wrong.
Do you suffer from fatigue, performance decrement or diverse chronic diseases? This physical and mental state is not a mystery any longer. Scientists explain it with the help of the term sleep deprivation. To be more precise, all these ‘ailments’ are associated with the chronic condition of not having enough sleep (7-8 hours)  because while sleeping our bodies ‘restart’ themselves like a computer system in order to function properly and to refill us with energy.
Thus, it appears to be a closed circuit: in pursuit of some illusory well-being people exhaust themselves, which results in facing one day their vitality to have run out and being impossible to continue the race. In other words, partisans of this lifestyle undermine their health, renounce real life and happiness voluntarily, don’t they?
Moreover, it is well-known that the internal state has a significant influence on the appearance. So, if one doesn’t have enough sleep it is not a surprise that his or her skin is dull, hair is brittle and nails are chipping. What is even more interesting, sleep deprivation may cause obesity. Harvard University research shows:

During sleep, our bodies secrete hormones that help to control appetite, energy metabolism, and glucose processing. Obtaining too little sleep upsets the balance of these and other hormones. For example, poor sleep leads to an increase in the production of cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone.” Poor sleep is also associated with increases in the secretion of insulin following a meal. Insulin is a hormone that regulates glucose processing and promotes fat storage; higher levels of insulin are associated with weight gain, a risk factor for diabetes.

Besides, they say that only a happy person can be beautiful. And do you know the etymology of the word “endorphins” denoting the happiness hormone? It proceeds from two words: ἔνδον / Greek: éndon meaning “within” and morphine, from Morpheus (Μορφεύς / Ancient Greek: Morpheús, the god of sleep in the Greek mythology). It just can’t be a coincidence!

So, it seems that The Brothers Grimm did know the main beauty secret and encoded it in their famous fairy-tale.And I hope that there is no longer the question for you “To sleep or not to sleep?”

Sleep enough, be happy and look stunning!

References:

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorphins

A few tips for beauty sleep: 

http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Beauty-Sleep

http://amylovessleep.wordpress.com/category/sleep-tips/

Originally posted at ЯЭ-43

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