Obsessed with sleep and a thinner mid-section?

Like watching paint dry. An excerpt from 1963 Andy Warhol's "Sleep", 8 hours of footage watching his friend John Giorno...Sleep. It was said that he originally wanted to film Brigitte Bardot sleeping. That seems slightly more interesting. 

Beauty sleep is not a myth and sleep does lessen the severity of wrinkles in the face and neck, at least temporarily. Part of this is due to a decline in body temperature and a shift in body position. The body cools in anticipation of bed time (about half a degree) and to do so, the circulatory system increases blood flow to the skin. This is why the cheeks often flush at night.

What does it mean to be “radiant”? It generally means the color of the skin moves closer to the color of blood. A radiator in a house or car movers hot liquid around to distribute heat, and so does the circulatory system move warm blood around and skin tone changes to affect body temperature. This is why some people appear more radiant just before bedtime or during sleep.

Early in the nighttime sleep cycle, people typically have a surge in growth hormone. This period of deep sleep, contributes to what people call "beauty sleep" as secretion of growth hormone helps repair and rebuild body tissues like muscle and bone. Many of the body’s cells also show increased production and reduced breakdown of proteins during deep sleep. Since proteins are the building blocks needed for cell growth and for repair of damage from factors like stress and ultraviolet rays, deep sleep may truly be "beauty sleep."

Increased growth hormone release is believed to be linked to the fasting state, which develops in human sleep. There is some evidence that skin cells regenerate faster at night than during the day. Cell division happens throughout the day, but peaks around 2 am. This is literally renewal and rejuvenation during sleep. The peak in cell division happens even if you stay awake at night, while the surge in growth hormone doesn't.

Human nighttime sleep is lengthy in comparison with that of many other mammals. Other animals usually don't have releases of growth hormone during sleep and few other mammals enter a fasting state during sleep. Herbivores continue to digest food throughout their sleep, carnivores gorge themselves on meat, which can take up to a day to digest, and rodents wake up periodically to nibble more food. The human sleep-related growth hormone surge may be a mechanism to protect tissue protein against potentially detrimental effects of this fast, and also to promote the body's mobilization of its fat reserves.

What happens if you don't get your beauty sleep? It is not just lack of sleep that negatively affects body fat percentage and the risk of chronic disease—poor sleep quality does as well. Deep sleep also helps to negate the bad effects of cortisol. Growth hormone naturally decreases with age and also with increased abdominal fat, leading to a vicious cycle of fatigue, excess stress hormone and increased abdominal fat.