3 Reasons to Give Your Skin the Sleep it Needs
Forget about beauty. Your body needs sleep just to survive, let alone look good. And since your skin is your body’s biggest organ, it needs a lot of attention.
Eight hours is the serious sleeper’s nightly goal, which is pretty lofty for anyone with a full-time job, kids, friends, and/or favorite late-night TV shows. But it’s worth it when it comes to your skin. Get your daily dose of dozing and bid adieu to lackluster complexion, dark circles, puffy eyes and raw, red rashes.
3 Things Sleep Does for Your Skin
1. Sleep keeps your stress hormones under control.
The more you are running with your energy on empty, the more stress your body takes on, and the more your stress hormones start pumping. Stress hormones essentially annihilate the natural collagen production in your skin. Collagen is the stuff that keeps your epidermis supple and firm and hydrated. Without it: dryness and wrinkles.
Stress hormones are also linked to how much your blood vessels expand and contract: the lead contributors to those puffy circles under your eyes after a long night.
2. Sleep lets your immune system reboot.
Your immune system protects your entire body, skin included. There is a reason you break out on the days you are the most stressed and sleep the least. It’s because your immune system is repressed to the point it can’t fight off the environment’s daily irritants like dirt, makeup build up, and chemicals in the air.
3. Sleep lets the skin products you use do their job.
Chances are you use some sort of skin product, be it as simple as a daily cleanser or as targeted as anti-aging serum for under-eye puffiness and wrinkle reduction. Most of these products work better overnight: they are given uninterrupted hours to do their job and many active ingredients stay active longer when kept out of the sun. Anti-agers like vitamin C and vitamin E don’t always hold up under excessive light and air, and many moisturizers are better absorbed when they don’t need to compete with makeup, pollution, or sun.
Tips to a Full Night’s Sleep
Tossing and turning throughout the night has negative effects on your skin too. If six to eight uninterrupted hours of sleep seem impossible, think about giving your sleep experience a makeover.
- Get comfortable. If you’re cold, invest in warmer bedding. If you’re too warm, try sleeping with a light-weight comforter. Find a pair of comfortable ear plugs to combat noisy neighbors, and sleep in a silky eye mask if there is distracting light seeping into your bedroom.
- Know what your body needs. Different types of sleepers have different sleep requirements. Side or stomach sleepers will suffer from sore muscles and a disrupted sleep experience with too stiff a pillow; back sleepers will, likewise, suffer with a soft, unsupportive pillow. Stomach- and side-sleepers are at higher risk for face, neck, and chest wrinkles than those who sleep straight on their backs, but focus first on getting a full night’s sleep before you start training yourself to sleep face-up.
- Focus on calming, soothing activities. Sleep is your body’s and your skin’s time to relax and rejuvenate. Give it the things it craves: lots of water, quiet music, peaceful reading. Indulge is some of the richer skin products you might not want to wear during the day. Turn on a humidifier to give your skin one more moisturizer as you sleep.
Emma T. is a writer who practices a good night’s sleep with down bedding made the Pacific Coast Feather Company, a manufacturer and online retailer of down comforters and hotel bedding.
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