Even with the perfect skincare routine, it's all for nothing if you are not getting enough sleep. Beauty sleep is real, and it's the antidote to keeping your skin, nails, and hair looking and feeling healthy.
The real question is, how much should you sleep?
Scientists recommend that:
- School-age children should be sleeping between 9-11 hours a night
- Teenagers should be sleeping between 8-10 hours a night
- Adults should be sleeping between 7-9 hours a night
Benefits of Sleep on Your Body
Sleep is essential for your physical and mental well-being as it allows your body and mind to recharge, leaving you refreshed when you wake up.
Without enough sleep, the brain cannot function properly. An effect that can affect your physical appearance and impair your ability to concentrate, think clearly, and process memories.
Benefits of Sleep for Your Skin
The telltale sign that you're not getting enough sleep is bags, redness, dark circles and puffiness under your eyes, more wrinkles and lines, and you become more prone to acne breakouts.
You can reverse all these effects by ensuring you get at least 8 hours of sleep each night.
Some of the benefits of a good night's sleep for your skin include the following:
- Reduced Signs of Ageing
The production of collagen increases while you sleep. Collagen is a protein and the main building block for skin, hair, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. According to dermatologist Dr Ohara Aivaz, collagen keeps the skin from sagging, giving that plump, youthful look.
Instead of using collagen supplements as part of your anti-aging regime, get enough sleep each night.
- Decreased risk of acne
Good sleep reduces the factors that cause acne. By getting enough sleep, you reduce your stress levels, blood starts flowing properly, and your skin repair happens faster and much more efficiently.
When you cut back on sleep, you reduce the amount of time your skin has to work to repair itself, affecting your appearance. Like drinking enough water and quitting smoking, getting enough sleep can make a noticeable difference to your skin.
- Hydrated and Healthy Complexion
While sleeping, the body produces the hormone vasopressin, which helps prevent dehydration by increasing water absorption in the kidney. That's why you don't get dehydrated while you sleep. In other words, shorter sleep cycles contribute to dehydration, affecting your skin health.
Benefits of good sleep for your hair
If you're getting less than 7-9 hours of sleep each night, you're doing your hair a disservice, especially for us ladies.
Your hair follicle contains stem cells, hair follicle stem cells. These cells keep the hair growth cycles running smoothly and rely on sleep to function correctly.
Lack of enough sleep stunts hair growth and weakens your immune system and your body's ability to absorb nutrients needed to produce healthy hair. Your hair volume, shine, and condition are compromised without proper nutrient absorption.
Whether you take vitamins, use high-quality hair products, and stay hydrated, a lack of sleep will throw off your game.
So, if you're unsure where to start on your healthy hair journey, start with sleep.
Benefits of Good Sleep for Your Nails
Look at your nails; you can gauge the quality of your sleep by their condition.
Weak and dull nails signify that you're not getting the optimum hours of sleep per night.
If you're not getting enough sleep, try to identify the root cause: Is it stress? Do you take too much caffeine right before sleeping? Once you have identified the problem, start working on finding a solution for it.
Because now you understand why you need your beauty sleep.