Beauty Sleep 2.0 The Ultimate Guide to Better Rest, with Tips and Practices for Healthier Skin and Mind

Though Disney’s Sleeping Beauty woke up looking virtually unchanged from 100 years earlier, we can say a regimented sleep routine significantly improves your health and beauty. It’s not just a fairy tale; scientific evidence has shown that our bodies undergo some changes while we’re in dreamland.

That’s right; our skin goes into renewal and repair mode during sleep. But unlike the cursed princess, your complexion, health, and mental well-being will reap the rewards – as long as it’s quality sleep.

We’ll explain how the value of healthy sleep leads to many benefits for your health and beauty, how you can achieve better Zzz’s, and why there’s scientific truth to the notion of ‘beauty sleep’.

We all love our skin. How can we repay it for working full-time as the largest and most vulnerable organ in our body? Get enough quality sleep. As an adult, it’s recommended by the CDC to snooze for at least seven hours with that being uninterrupted sleep and no disorders such as snoring or gasping for air.

While the recommended hours of shut-eye we’re encouraged to get can seem more like overkill or even a dream, there’s a scientific truth that getting a good night’s rest equals dreamy skin and much more! Just when we thought that sleep was just a state of doing nothing, it turns out that even when our body is at rest, our skin is busy recovering from a hard day’s work at protecting us from pollution and toxins.

The time that you spend snoozing away is the golden hour for your skin to repair and renew itself. Your body boosts blood flow to the skin, which means you wake up glowing like a goddess! The process of cell division (that occurs to renew and repair skin) is at its peak as well as collagen rejuvenation for plumper, firmer skin. This includes the shedding of dead skin cells and subsequently replacing them with younger cells. Thanks to science, we know our bodies are actually doing something paramount!

Let’s face it; the less you sleep, the worse your complexion gets! It’s called ‘beauty sleep’ because more sleep means the closer you are to achieving your glowing princess skin dreams. While upholding a strict sleep schedule does wonders for your mind and health, the benefits are dreamy for our complexions.

Promotes cell turnover: At night, the process of skin cell turnover occurs at a faster rate. This means new skin cells are replacing old ones to keep your skin healthy, glowing, and looking more youthful.

Moisturizes and hydrates: Did you know your skin can lose moisture while you sleep, which can lead to signs of intrinsic aging? This explains why you might wake up with extremely dehydrated skin, which can exasperate fine lines and wrinkles. A good nighttime treatment and allowing it plenty of time to shine can help replenish lost moisture and help plump skin.

Delays the aging signs: During a good night’s rest, your skin gets to work on collagen production, something you might be familiar with for its skin-plumping ability to prevent wrinkle formation. If you don’t log enough sleep, your collagen levels can dip, resulting in sagging skin, fine lines, wrinkles, and a whole host of skin woes.

Boosts a glowing complexion: During sleep, your body’s blood flow to your skin increases, resulting in a glowing complexion when you wake up and those rosy cheeks - no blush necessary! This helps keep those dreaded dark eye circles at bay too since they’re commonly caused by poor blood circulation.

To ensure that your skin is making the most of your snooze time, it’s important to make sure you’re getting the right amount of sleep every night. This is where learning how to get better sleep quality and good sleep hygiene comes in!

#1: Establish a Consistent Sleep Schedule
Our smartphones can often disrupt our sleep habits. However, they can help them, as well. Set timers on your phone to remind you when to start winding down, and when to turn off the screens. This will prompt you earlier in the evening to get your bedtime and skin care routines finished up.

#2: Create a Sleep-Friendly Environment
Your environment and habits go hand-in-hand, so set it up in a way that’ll effectively help you get to sleep faster. It’s often considered a rule of thumb to model your sleep environment after a cave: make it dark, cool, and damp. So, close those blinds, grab a sleep mask, turn down the thermostat, and consider investing in a humidifier. Incorporating some mild aromatherapy can be effective, as well, so consider using a diffuser or a pillow spray at night.

#3: Establish Relaxation Techniques
When creating your nightly routine, try to establish at least one relaxation technique that can be done every night. Turn the screen time off, and consider making time to read a relaxing book, meditate, or maybe enjoy a soothing, non-caffeinated, or non-alcoholic beverage. Instead, stick with plenty of water and herbal tea for a better night’s sleep.

#4: Consider Your Eating Habits
Eating right before bed can cause more than poor sleep – it can also impair digestion and metabolism. That can lead to potential issues with hormone balance and energy levels, not to mention indigestion and acid reflux! An important tip for how to get better sleep is to have your last meal at least an hour before bed. Also, try to keep your evening meals full of nutrients.

So, now you know how beauty sleep works and the importance of a good night’s rest. Your skin will naturally work to refresh itself as you float off into dreamland. But did you know that a night skincare routine on top of that can also work more effectively while sleeping?

That’s right! As your blood flow increases during sleep, your skin can absorb more of your favorite night skincare products. Since your skin cells are less busy working to protect your body from daytime environmental stressors, it makes your sleeping hours essential to feed them with skin-loving, natural ingredients! That’s where we come in!

While our skincare products are pulling double-duty both at repair and nighttime defense, your body needs some TLC for total-body princess vibes!

Multi-Vitamin + Antioxidants Potent PM Serum

Vitamin C can help boost your collagen production even further while you’re snoozing to promote brighter, firmer skin. Our potent serum boasts the unique technology of combining vitamin C and niacinamide into a stable formula to help increase ceramide levels, which means more skin hydration, moisture, and plumpness. The powerful serum also contains vitamin E, CoQ10, and retinol to further rev up skin repair.

Retinol PM Eye Cream

Our nighttime luxurious eye cream features plant-based retinol to bust your dark eye circle nightmares. The night is the best time to reap the benefits of retinol since it can make skin more vulnerable to daytime sun damage. Your skin loses moisture more easily at night, and that includes your eye area.

So, the addition of hydrating hyaluronic acid and moisturizing acai and pomegranate oils help keep crow’s eye feet away. Vegan stem cells from mung beans work to promote rapid cell turnover and new skin cell production for a truly, action-packed formula to work effortlessly during the night.

Multi-Vitamin + Antioxidants Ultra Riche PM Treatment

There’s a final step you need to take so your night skincare routine efforts won’t go to waste - moisturize! Since blood circulation to your face (and body) increases while you’re in dreamland, anything you put on your skin will be better absorbed.

Our luscious nighttime treatment cream features a strong dose of moisturizing vitamin E to combat skin damage as well as correcting vitamin C and reparative vitamin A, and it works to combat daily damage and signs of aging.

Lavender Body Scrub

Are you ready to transform your nightly skincare routine into a self-care ritual? You’ll need the purifying and aromatherapeutic properties of lavender! This plant-based super scrub features sunflower, apricot, and jojoba oils to balance the skin’s delicate moisture barrier. Vitamin E and lavender essential oil work to buff away dry, rough skin while blanketing skin in rich, supple moisture.

French Lavender Whipped Body Butter

You’ll want to seal in all that exfoliating goodness with a supremely decadent body butter – and we have the perfect match for your lavender scrub! This thick and nourishing body butter deeply moisturizes and softens using creamy cocoa, shea, and avocado butters, with added hydration from aloe and rose hydrosol. This cruelty-free skin treat is infused with the scent of clean, calming lavender.

Together with a nighttime skincare routine and tips for improving your sleep quality, we wanted to drop a few, quick lifestyle habits that you may need to change or tweak for better rest, health, and beauty benefits.

Diet

We touched on this earlier with eating habits that can affect your quality of sleep. Diet is a super important, yet often ignored factor in maintaining great skin and shut-eye. Eating a healthy diet full of colorful, natural and organic, nutritious foods will help to keep the skin in prime condition.

Eating healthy fats can help the skin maintain its natural protective barrier. Fruits and veggies provide antioxidants and vitamins that help to prevent early signs of skin aging from harmful free radicals and environmental exposure. Just be sure to finish your meals at least an hour before bedtime for proper digestion.

Exercise

Exercising also improves sleep for many people and has been found to improve sleep quality. Getting the right amount of exercise helps to keep your circulatory system and lymphatic system healthy. This boosts the delivery of nutrients to your skin and the drainage of impure, lymphatic fluid from your tissue. This, in turn, will help you sleep more peacefully without frequently waking up from body imbalances such as hormones or toxins.

Stress-reduction techniques

For improved rest, try to establish at least one stress-reduction technique. Consider reading a relaxing book or listening to a podcast. Decompress with a DIY spa day or just a simple, warm bath or some meditation. This can be as simple as finishing off your bath regime with some relaxing aromatherapy, to give your senses a chance to catch their breath.

For hundreds of years, certain scents have been used for their powerful soothing, and sedative properties. Research shows that even certain scents found in nature can help to relax our nervous systems, regulate breathing, and lower blood pressure for better sleep. Lavender is one!

If sleep deprivation can make your hard-working body struggle, imagine what it can do to your appearance. A lack of sleep has side effects on your well-being and otherwise glorious outside self, including skin health. We can see how sleep and skin are directly connected.

Turns out there is some scientific truth behind the notion of beauty sleep, after all. By blending a healthy lifestyle with little lifestyle tweaks, and a big dollop of consistent shut-eye, you’re able to give your body the repair and recovery it needs for a better you – inside and out. Be sure to prioritize enough daily sleep so you can wake daily to your sleeping beauty!