Here’s the best news ever: You need to sleep more for your inner health and outer beauty!
Beauty sleep is the real deal. While we slumber our bodies heal and regenerate cells, crucial to our health. Allowing yourself to stay in bed for an extra hour can have tremendous benefits on your physical and mental health, helping you shine from the inside out. But just how much sleep should you be getting to reap these beauty benefits? Experts recommend 8–10 hours of sleep for teenagers and 7–9 hours for adults. If you can hit those numbers on a regular basis, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:
Beautiful Skin
If you’re searching for that eternally-youthful glow, the answer might lie on your pillow. Sleep deprivation accelerates the skin’s ageing process and loss of collagen, leading to fine lines and wrinkles. While you’re sleeping, your skin is hard at work healing itself. During the deeper phases of sleep, your body produces growth hormone, which repairs daily damage from things like sun exposure and pollution and creates new cells so you wake up looking brighter, fresher, and more vibrant.
A Trim Waistline
The idea of laying in bed to lose weight might sound counterintuitive, but science says otherwise. In one study, dieters who had adequate sleep lost as much as 55 percent more body fat than those who were sleep-deprived. This is because lack of sleep leads to an imbalance of appetite-regulating hormones, causing you to eat more.
Sexy Eyes
Inadequate sleep causes fluids to build up around the eye area. Because the skin around our eyes is some of the thinnest skin on our body, swelling and discoloration can become really noticeable when you’re low on sleep.
This fluid build-up is especially common if you sleep on your stomach or side.
A Robust Immune System
Your body needs sufficient sleep in order to produce the proteins that effectively fight infection and inflammation. When you don’t get enough sleep, your immune system becomes weakened, making you more susceptible to sickness. A weakened system also aggravates immunity-related skin issues like acne, psoriasis and eczema.
Better Workouts
A healthy amount of sleep can help you maximise your workout routine. One study showed better speed, accuracy and reaction time among well-rested basketball players. In contrast, another study found lower grip strength and walking speed in women who are sleep-deprived.
A Sharper Mind
Quality sleep can lead to better focus, sharper memory and overall increased productivity. Whether you’re a CEO or stay-at-home parent, productivity starts when you close your eyes. Even a 20-minute catnap can boost productivity.
Inner Harmony
Even small levels of sleep deprivation can lead to mental health issues. If you frequently wake up during the night due to insomnia or sleep apnoea, it can alter your brain’s activity and neurochemicals and affect your mood and thinking. If you suspect that you may be suffering from a mental illness, make sure you’re getting enough sleep and don’t be afraid to talk to your doctor about solutions. And even if you’re not prone to a medical condition like depression, just one week of not getting enough sleep could leave you feeling sad, angry, stressed out, and just generally not on your A-game.
Enough of the Why? Give me the How!
It’s one thing to want more sleep, it’s another thing to achieve it. There are many things you can do to prepare for a good night’s rest, such as investing in a quality mattress and pillow, sticking to a regular sleep schedule, not eating two hours before bedtime, getting enough physical exercise during waking hours and creating a restful environment that is cool, dark and quiet.
LeRêve Aromatherapy can also help. Something that ancient civilisations knew and modern science has now discovered is that certain Essential Oils have calming and sedating properties that help relax your mind and prepare the body to fall into a deeper sleep more quickly.
The regular use of Essential Oils in night-time sleep preparations can become rituals that signal to the mind and body that it’s time to sleep.
Single Pure Essential Oils with sleep-inducing qualities include Chamomile, Lavender, Orange, Rose and Sandalwood. A blend of Essential Oils has been shown to be more effective than using a single Oil. LeRêve’s Sweet Sleep Blend and Stress-Less Blend are ready to use and can both aid sleeplessness.
Okay we’ve identified the Essential Oils to use, now what about the best methods of use? Thankfully there are a variety of different ways you can incorporate Aromatherapy into your beauty sleep preparations…
Switch on your Ultrasonic Diffuser. This is the perhaps the easiest and most obvious way to ensure a deep sleep every night. Fill the tank with water and add up to six drops of Essential Oils. The Diffuser will disperse the Oil Blend into the air and circulate it around your room for you to breathe all night long.
A bedtime bath is a great way to get the relaxation and sleep benefits of Aromatherapy while also taking advantage of the sleep-promoting effects of a warm soak. Mix several drops of your favourite Oil Blend with Carrier Blend and pour into your bathwater as you hop in. Schedule your soaking time for an hour before your bedtime and go to bed straight after the bath.
Make your own pillow mist. You can combine Essential Oils with purified water in a spray bottle to give a light mist to your bed linens. For every 500mL of water, use 10-20 drops of Essential Oils.
Some people find it soothing to apply Essential Oils to pressure points, such as on the wrists or temples, in a light self-massage (a massage from your bed partner works even better)! Use a LeRêve Bath & Body Oil or dilute several drops of Oil in Carrier Blend, then rub over the body avoiding sensitive areas.
As you’re using essential oils at night, pay attention to how you feel. Scent is a highly individual experience; each of us reacts to smells differently. The right scents for your relaxation and sleep are the ones that make you feel relaxed and sleepy. You may need to experiment with different Essential Oils before you find the right one for your nightly routine, but once you’ve found the best Blend, it will be your night-time friend forever!
