By Dana DeMercurio
Do you remember the last time you got the doctor-recommended eight hours of uninterrupted sleep and woke up feeling refreshed, spry and perhaps looking younger than you did before turning out the lights the night before? Our guess is it’s been awhile. It’s easy to get distracted after crawling into bed and trying to unwind; getting caught up on what happened in your social sphere while you were working your butt off all day, or flipping on the TV to lighten the load of shows currently building up in your DVR. Don’t feel bad, it happens to the best of us.
But it’s a bad habit for those who are concerned about maximizing their beauty sleep. Yes, we said it. Beauty sleep. It’s a real thing, and it’s time to start achieving it. Because bottom line, sleep is nature’s most powerful (and free!) beauty treatment.
Waking up with bags and dark circles under your eyes, dull skin, discoloration and even acne can all be signs that you’re skimping on some serious shut-eye. While sleeping, your skin begins to revitalize and rejuvenate itself, generating human growth hormone – a vital ingredient for collagen production. Your entire body, including your skin, goes into repair mode.
It’s truly amazing what our body undergoes as we drift off to slumber. For instance, the body’s hydration rebalances, which is what allows skin to recover moisture. During this time, excess water is processed for removal. Everything seems to effortlessly go back to square one. However, lack of sleep causes blood vessels to dilate due to water retention, which is what ultimately causes the unsightly appearance of dark circles, wrinkles and excessive dryness. But that’s not all.
“When you don’t get good sleep, your body become prone to acne and inflammatory breakouts and accelerate aging,” states Kristen Ma, co-owner of Pure + Simple Inc. and author of Beauty Pure and Simple: The Ayurvedic Approach to Beautiful Skin. As an Ayurvedic practitioner and esthetician who has mastered the subject of holistic beauty, Ma has an enlightened approach to health and wellness, especially pertaining to the importance of sleep.
“Without ample sleep, the body finds it difficult to heal the stress and damage the day has put on your skin and tissues. Whatever energy you have goes into maintenance, and when all your reserves are used, you crash, becoming vulnerable to disease. But besides the detriment that a lack of sleep causes your overall health, it also has a direct effect on your complexion.”
The fact that skin ages faster when lack of sleep is prevalent is what researchers for Estée Lauder found in their commissioned clinical trial a few years ago. Physician-scientists at University Hospital Case Medical Center studied 60 pre-menopausal women between the ages of 30 and 49, half of which fell into the poor quality sleep category.
Researchers evaluated the women’s skin, conducting a variety of tests and skin challenges, finding those who didn’t experience good sleep patterns exhibited more signs of skin aging, including uneven pigmentation, reduced skin elasticity and an increase in fine lines.
In a related press release, Dr. Daniel Yarosh, a senior vice president for Estée Lauder Companies, stated, “This research shows for the first time, that poor sleep quality can accelerate signs of skin aging and weaken the skin’s ability to repair itself at night. These connections between sleep and skin aging, now supported with solid scientific data, will have a profound effect on how we study skin and its functions.”
Sleep isn’t just for a youthful-looking face, however. People who suffer from chronic sleep problems have a much higher rate of developing a number of diseases and conditions, including depression, obesity, heart disease and diabetes, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Studies have also shown that lack of sleep impacts cognitive performance and memory.
So before you go out and buy the latest and greatest moisturizers and serums that boast the miraculous ability to turn back the hands of time that are showing up on your face, just remember that a few extra z’s is among one of the best methods to achieving glowing, youthful skin and a healthy mind, body and spirit.
