Rest

Beauty sleep is a real thing, research shows

A couple of bad nights is enough to make a person look "significantly" more ugly, their sleep experiments suggest.

Dark-circled "panda" eyes and puffy lids can even put others off socialising with you, they say.

People were rated by strangers as less healthy and approachable when they had tired faces.

The experiment

The researchers asked 25 university students, some male and some female, to be the guinea pigs in their sleep experiment.

10 hacks to help you sleep better

Of the 20,000 people we surveyed for our recent sleep snapshot, just 12 per cent said they wake up feeling refreshed — and 75 per cent said they have trouble falling asleep at least some of the time.

If these results are anything to go by, many of us struggle to hit the hay and get good sleep.

But since you're going to spend a third of your life dozing, it's worth developing some healthy habits.

How being alone may be the key to rest

The results of the world's largest survey on rest indicate that to feel truly rested, a lot of us want to be alone, reports Claudia Hammond.

Last November an online survey called The Rest Test was launched to investigate what rest means to different people, how they like to rest and whether there is a link between rest and well-being. The results are now in and the analysis has begun.