Beauty Sleep: How Sleep Affects Your Skin

“Are you okay? You look tired today.” We all know that lack of sleep can effect the way we look and act. Dark circles under our eyes and pillow wrinkles on our face. However, lack of healthy sleep habits can do much more damage to your skin’s health than a couple dark circles or puffy bags under your eyes. We are going to walk you through the importance sleep has on your skin. As well as a few of our top bedtime tips for keeping your skin happy and healthy with beauty sleep.

The Truth About Beauty Sleep:

It’s no myth, beauty sleep is a real thing. If you aren’t getting proper rest your skin and body doesn’t have time to repair and regenerate. Making time take its toll much quicker. Below are a few fascinating ways that your body is directly affected with or without sleep. Understanding how your body functions is always key in adjusting your habits for maximum benefits.

Melatonin Is Wonderful For Your Skin:

The hormone your body emits at night in order to send out “sleepy” feelings is melatonin. While melatonin is well known for it’s ability to help you drift off to dream land, it is often not known for it’s beauty and health benefits. Melatonin has free radical scavenger, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant effects. Which means that it helps to increases antioxidant defenses and helps prevent tissue damage and helps with healing and cell regeneration, as well as assisting in many other function for a healthy body.

Not only is this fabulous for your skin and hair health and beauty, it is also vital for your overall health and well being. Melatonin can help support a healthy immune system as well as keep your looking and feeling beautiful. Melatonin production does decrease with age, which can make it difficult to get to sleep as well. We suggest talking to your doctor about taking melatonin supplements if you’re having trouble sleeping at night.

You may also like: A Guide To Using Melatonin

Cortisol Decreases During Sleep:

Cortisol is known as the stress hormone and it has a negative impact on skin. When your cortisol levels increase it can increase sebum production and clog pores, creating acne. Cortisol also increases inflammation in the body, which means if you have issues with rosacea, you may notice that lack of sleep is a trigger for you. Yet another negative effect of cortisol, is that it increases the effects of aging on the skin as well.

The great news is that cortisol level decrease while you sleep, while they increase if you stay up late through the night. So if you get enough sleep your cortisol levels decrease. Which means when have a healthy sleep schedule you are less likely to experience acne, inflammation, and aging.

Sleep & Aging:

Within three days without the proper amount of sleep (6-8 hours per 24 hour period) you can begin to see premature signs of aging. Or an increase in puffy eyes, dark circles, deeper wrinkles, and even a change in overall skin texture. This is due to a combination of side effects of not getting enough sleep. One is the increase in overall cortisol levels, which we went over all of the many negative effects that has on skin previously.

However, this is also caused by the lack of healing and cell regeneration that typically occurs during deep sleep. With your body being able to regenerate new healthy skin, you are instead living in dry, older skin that is dead and needs sleep and hydration in order to slough off and generate a new layer of skin. This is what causes your skin to appear aged and tired.

Learn more about the effects sleep has on aging in our post: Sleep and Aging: Sleep Habit Changes With Age

Sun Damage and Skin Healing:

Sleeping is vital for your whole body to heal, and stimulate new cell growth. When you are not getting the proper amount of sleep, your body is unable to properly heal itself. Sunburns and other damage to the skin will take longer to heal if you are not getting the proper amount of sleep. Not only is this inconvenient that it takes longer, it can have a lasting effect in scarring and increase chances of melanoma.

In some cases lack of sleep and a healthy immune system can even increase the likelihood of skin cancer. Sleep is such an important function for your body and it helps support your overall health and healing in so many ways. Making beauty sleep so much more than just puffy under eyes.

Head over to our post: Meditation for Sleep, Anxiety & Healing to learn about the many benefits of meditation.

Tips For Healthy Sleep & Skin:

Along with proper rest there are many other tips to help your skin stay at its best. Below are several ways to get your skin beauty sleep ready for optimal rest and rejuvenation to wake up to glowing, healthy skin every morning.

Create a Nighttime Skincare Routine

Prepare your skin for sleep is not only a good idea, it is also often a luxurious act of self care. We suggest finding a skin care routine that you do every night and every morning. At night you want to cleanse dirt and oils off of your skin from the day. Then you should tone and moisturize. Toning the skin helps to balance your skins ph levels.

Next comes moisturizing! Your nighttime moisturizer can be heavier than what you use during the day and should not include sunscreen. While sunscreen is vital for your daily moisturizer for protection, it can needlessly clog pores at night.

For your morning skin routine, we suggest a gentle non-stripping cleanser followed by a toner and a daily moisturizer with SPF. There are thousands of products out there and different things work for different people. Find products that work well for you and use them daily.

Pull Your Hair Up

Now that we know it is important not to wash our hair every day, it is going to carry more oils, as well as allergens, dust, and more. Long hair acts as a filter and picks up a lot of stuff. You do not want all of that laying on your beautifully cleansed and moisturized skin.

We suggest finding a comfortable way to keep your hair away from your face as you sleep. Whether that is in a bun, braid, or under a silk cap it doesn’t matter just keep it off of your face.

Beauty Tip: Silk caps and scrunchies help to keep your hair back while protecting them from breakage and damage.

Clean Your Sheets

Even if you are going to sleep with freshly cleansed skin every night, your pillow case is still getting dirty. Oils, sweat, and dead skin cells will naturally collect onto your pillow at night.

Keeping your sheets clean will help prevent bacteria from festering on your skin causing acne and blackheads and inflammation. We suggest changing or washing your sheets everyone 1 to 2 weeks on average.

Learn more about how to care for your bedding in our post: A Guide To Changing and Washing Your Sheets

Use a Silk Pillowcase 

Recently silk pillow cases have become all the rage. Even beauty supply stores have started carrying silk pillow cases and eye masks to sell. But why silk? What is so special about the material of a pillowcase for your health and beauty? Real silk is a natural fiber that is smooth and has very little friction. The natural aspect of the fiber helps to absorb oils and wick away bacteria producing sweat.

While the texture of the silk is much more gentle on the skin which helps to keep away “sheet marks” and wrinkles. It also helps your hair too by limiting tangled hair, splits ends, and breakage. Allowing your skin and hair to be healthier and more beautiful. Added bonus, it feels delightful.

Looking for a great silk pillowcase? We love the colors and price at Brooklinen.com.

Wear Clean Pajamas

Wearing the t-shirt you wore all day, or the same pajamas you wore yesterday may not seem all that offensive. Maybe you weren’t very active today and you don’t feel sweaty or stinky, or you think the pajamas you wore yesterday still seem pretty much clean. If you want to do the most favors for your skin, we suggest changing into clean pajamas every night.

You may not realize how more sweat, dead skin, and bacteria are soaking into your clothing as you sleep or even during a relaxed day inside. However, it does indeed collect and having dirty clothes next to your skin while you sleep can cause body acne. Plus clean pajamas is a luxury that we can all afford.

Hydrate Hydrate Hydrate!

Sleeping often entails going hours without water, while often sweating from time to time. It can be a very dehydrating process which is no good for skin. Which is why we suggest wearing a good moisturizer at night and drinking plenty of water.

Drink a good amount of water in the evenings and hydrate when you wake up as well. Drinking cool water in the morning is more important for waking up and feeling refreshed than your morning cup of coffee.

Sleep & Skin Health – Final Thoughts:

Our bodies and minds need sleep. Without it, many of our bodies functions will begin to suffer. So much of our health and well being is supported by a full nights rest that it is no surprise that a lack of sleep has a negative effect on our healthy and beauty. Our skin is a reflection of our health, we often associate good healthy with beauty. Which is why beauty sleep is no myth, it is very real. The better you sleep, the better your overall health is, which in turn makes you look and feel more beautiful. So go get some sleep beautiful!

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