How Sleep Improves and Destroys the Health of the Skin

What is beauty sleep? It is that one sleep that helps us look rejuvenated and tension free. Even doctors say it benefits skin.

But doing it just once is not enough. A research program sponsored by Estee Lauder has confirmed that inadequate amount of sleep does ruin the health of skin in many different ways through internal biological factors. It is emphasized in the research report because several other factors such as smoking, drinking, taking painkillers and sun exposure have also been linked to poor skin texture. Staying away from them while sleeping less does no good to the skin. But what can less sleep really do? Let’s see what they found out from the research:

Wrinkles at Young age: The worst effect is visible premature wrinkles and skin slackening. Yes, less sleep speeds up the aging process.

Loss of Elasticity: Elasticity has strong connection with aging skin. The loss of it results in wrinkles screaming “your skin is getting old”.

Uneven pigmentation: Usually occurs from sun exposure, uneven pigmentation is more stubborn in women who sleep less. It just does not wish to leave.

Main reason
Just like our body, skin needs to relax. In fact, when we are asleep, our skin repairs itself. The more time is given to it, the better job it does. According got the research, in 72 hours; those who get sufficient sleep get to have 30 percent better repaired skin than those who sleep less.

Perfect hours of Sleep

How do we know how much sleep each one of us need? We always hear that in average we need 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. But that is true only for adults. Different age groups have different needs for hours of sleep. The table below shows this.

Do not be totally swayed by this. There will be days when we have to overwork. Sometimes due to other reasons, we are forced to get less than even 7 hours of sleep. Think about the night before an exam. Studying forces us to drink coffee to keep the sleep at bay. After all the hassle of exam is over, we finally want to relax our eyes. But in this situation, the whole normal 8 hours of sleep is not enough. According to National Sleep foundation, due to overwork, it is best to have as much sleep as possible. The goal is to give ample time to the body to recover from stress.

Sleep Magic
If you go through any skin care tips I have given in my articles, you will notice that I keep mentioning “do this before going to bed”. The reason behind this is that majority of the time their effectiveness shows up only after sleep. Even facial masks seem to show better results. This correlates with the research conclusions given above. Skin repairs better in sleep. The external healthy creams and skin care recipes simply boost its work. That is why, I recommend everyone to do what some skin conscious older women do and that is, have a customized skin regimen before bedtime.