We all know getting your full 8 hours of sleep is imperative to stay in good health, but did you know that getting a full night sleep is one of the most beneficial ways for keeping your skin looking healthy and youthful? Here, we teamed up to work with the experts at London Premier Laser Clinics and their team explain exactly what 8 hours of sleep can do for your skin.
1. Your skin-cells regenerate, meaning youthful skin
In the day, the skin works pretty hard to protect itself from daily aggravators such as free radicals, UV rays and the grime and sweat a day can bring. While we’re sleeping our skin switches into recovery mode and it’s an important time of repair and regeneration, in fact the regeneration process at night can be up to three times as faster than during the day, so it’s imperative to ensure you get 8 hours if not more of sleep per night. Furthermore, the sleep hormone melatonin begins to rise before bedtime, which heightens the feeling of tiredness as well as increasing our skins chance to repair itself naturally at night.
2. Your skin is more receptive to products
The nightly renewal process is when you will get the most benefits from your anti-ageing ingredients, and using the right products is imperative for ensuring the renewal process is aided. Before bedtime you should be applying the heavy-duty ingredients such as retinols and glycholic acid, these ingredients will absorb into the skin and do all the work for you overnight.
You should only be applying retinols at night as in the day the sunlight can break down its natural ingredients and also make you more sensitive to sun damage, so it’s best to protect your skin in the day with high factor sunscreen and repair with retinol at night.
3. You are more likely to be wrinkle free
Once you fall asleep, your body starts producing growth hormones, one of which being collagen which is a majorly important cell-repairing hormone. Collagen is imperative to fill your skin out which in turn prevents wrinkles from developing. The growth hormones ensure that your skin is producing enough collagen, which helps your skin to remain tight and bouncy and also allows your skin to repair acne and scarring across your body. Not only does it benefit your skin, collagen also helps improve other aspects of your body whilst you sleep such as hair, nails and also keeps your skin tone even and free from discolouration.
4. Your skin is able to de-stress
The daily stresses of life can cause ageing to happen quite rapidly, so ensuring you allow yourself at least 8 hours of sleep per night will help limit cortisol, the stress hormone. Not sleeping increases your cortisol levels putting your skin in a pro-flammatory state, and poor sleep will mean sullen looking skin and puffiness around the eyes.
5. Your protecting your skin from breakouts
Getting 8 hours of un-interrupted sleep on fresh sheets after washing and applying the correct nightly skincare is the best way to give you’re skin a new lease of life and prepare it for the day ahead. In the day our skin barrier is exposed to free radicals, as well as enduring sweat and makeup, these all in turn can aggravate the skin and cause it to break out which could cause skin conditions such as acne. Ensuring your skin is properly prepped for a good night’s sleep is half of the hard work and will help your skin to naturally repair.
6. Your giving your skin an environmental break
At night your skin should be squeaky clean, and with the correct products applied and a clean environment is able to breathe and have some downtime against daily environmental factors. In the comfort of your bedroom there is no UV damage, no smoking, no smog or temperature changes, you aren’t wearing makeup or sweating, all these daily factors contribute to your skin looking warn and damaged, so a long sleep is a good chance to repair from the day.
