Does Sleep Affect Acne?

For the longest time, when I was a growing teenager my parents always told me that not getting much sleep was the cause of my acne.

But how was a 15-16 year old boy to sleep when all his friends were staying up playing videos games, hanging talking about girls, and having such a blast doing history flashcards together til the wee hours of the night?

And then when I got to college, how was a 18-19 year old kid to sleep when all his dorm mates were running around campus, having parties, staying up late talking about girls, and goofing off?

Then when I was in my later years college, 20-21 years old, how was this young man supposed to get some sleep when all this friends were out partying with the ladies, drinking it up, and doing certain… “irresponsible” things that 21 year old young men do?

There was no way I was turning in at 11 pm. Especially when, in these days, that’s when the party gets started!

So I have some weird news to tell you about sleep in relation to acne…

There is a connection.

But it’s not what you may think.

The connection between sleep, your skin, and your health is a little weird. And it’s a concept that I’ve sort of combined together over the years based on many things that I’ve heard, things that I’ve researched and experienced, and my own beliefs and thoughts about sleep.

Here it is…

YES, SLEEP DOES AFFECT ACNE.

Yet, not the way you might think. When you’re parents were telling you to go to bed early (like mine were) and then telling that the reason you were getting pimples was because you were sleeping late, they were partially correct…

When you don’t sleep, sleep very little, or contort your sleeping pattern into owl like affairs (where you’re sleeping in the day and waking up in the evening) your body’s internal clock is fiddled with. When your body’s internal clock has been randomly adjusted to how it’s NOT supposed to run, odd things may happen. Things that are NOT supposed to happen… may happen.

Lack of sleep lowers the immune system, it lowers all functions of the body because well… you’re tired. This one’s pretty obvious.

But I don’t think many people have thought about the correlations and consequences of a body that is performing at a less than optimal level. Consider this:

Lack of Sleep = Tired = Lower Body Performance = Lower Organ Performance = More susceptible to infection, disease, organ malfunction, lowered ability to rid the body of undesirables, and inflammation (acne)

That last one is probably the one that you’re going to most concerned about.

I DON’T SLEEP THAT MUCH, BUT HOW COME I DON’T GET ACNE?

I think I must be different. That’s what I used to think. I didn’t think my body’s was like the everyone else’s, where sleep had any correlation with my face.

I would sleep here and there, I would take naps in the afternoon for 2 hours at a time causing me to stay up until late hours of the night. I would sometimes sleep 8 hours at night, other times 10, and sometimes only 5-6 hours. It was random but it wasn’t like I suddenly would break out because I didn’t get as much rest one night, right?

That’s right, I didn’t break out. But that was because sleeping late or only a few hours once in a while did not harm my health too much. I would try and make it up the next day. But if you’re consistently not getting good rest, you’re going to see and FEEL the results. You’re body’s going to slowly deteriorate and all of how it’s supposed to perform is too.

This is all very obvious stuff. But I feel the need to mention it because a lot of people feel that seeing is believing. “If I don’t sleep that much for a few days, and my skin is exactly the same therefore sleep is not related to acne.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Just because you can’t see the immediate effects does NOT mean that nothing is happening because our faces are NOT rulers of measurement all the time. We CANNOT use our faces and acne to measure and see how good and bad something is always. Granted, there are some instances where this is possible, but it’s not a good idea to always refer to your face when something is questionable.

HOW DOES SLEEP AFFECT ACNE? WHY SHOULD I GO TO BED EARLY?

All this talk about how sleep is important but I break the rules and sleep here and there and I feel fine. Where’s your proof?

I used to always argue with my parents about going to bed early. In my head, if I slept 8 ~ 10 hours, whether it be from 11 pm to 9 am or 3 am to 11 am, what did it matter? Can’t I sleep at 5 am and wake up at 12 pm, then spread out another hour or two of naps throughout the day?

I mean, c’mon, the end result is that I’m still sleeping just as much as someone who goes to bed at 11 pm and wakes up at 7 am right?

This is true, you ARE sleeping the SAME amount of hours as someone who is sleeping from 11 pm to 7 am. BUT IT IS NOT THE SAME. And to understand this you may need to understand a little bit about how sleep works.

1.) We sleep in 5 stages. If you can stay asleep for roughly 2 hours, you can make it to “deep sleep” or REM. This is the stage where you’re actually getting rest and helping your body recover. It takes 2 hours to get here. The less time you spend in REM, the less you’re actually “resting.”

There was a documentary I watched, I believe it was on the Discovery channel where an experiment was conducted with college students and REM. College students were allowed to sleep the SAME AMOUNT OF HOURS but were not allowed to reach REM of their sleep cycle. So they were waken up every so often before reaching “deep sleep.” The results were amazing.

These students, who slept the SAME AMOUNT OF HOURS, were exhausted in class, couldn’t concentrate, and kept daydreaming. Why were they day “dreaming”? Because their bodies so desperately wanted to sleep that they were trying to sleep DURING the day.

So if you think you can sleep here and there throughout the day, you might be mistaken. The longer you sleep ALL AT ONCE, the better.

2.) Your body heals your liver between 11 pm and 1-2 am. The first time I was told this, I literally laughed in disbelief.

“Okay, so you’re telling me that when it hits 11 pm, my body actually goes and does (this and that)? I don’t think so.”
There’s an ancient Chinese theory stating that if your stomach and liver are weak, that your body will require more sleep because you need to spend more time healing your organs and that your weakened liver works a lot slower than it should.

My reasoning, at that time, was that the clock was man made and that there was no possible way that the human body could recognize what time it was. I understood the importance of deep sleep and REM, but REALLY? Now my body can read time? I don’t think so. In my head, as long as I slept for 8 consecutive hours, it didn’t matter whether it be 11 pm or 5 am in the morning.

I was WRONG. Sighing… if only I could go back in time and explain to my stupid teenage self what I know now. If I could, the conversation would probably be something like this:

“Let me ask you a simple question young self who is both cool and awesome.”

“Sure, older self who is cool, awesome, and also refined.”

“Oh, why thank you. So… back to the question: Why is it that we feel sleepy when the sun sets? According to your theory, if we can sleep at any time as long as it’s a consecutive 8 hours, then why it is that most human beings feel sleepy around 8 pm to midnight?”

“Dunno.”

“It’s because our sleeping cycles have a lot to do with the sun. When the sun sets, it triggers our bodies to produce a chemical called melatonin. Melatonin induces sleep. There was a study conducted where human beings were confined to a room where sunlight and darkness was simulated. Scientists gradually increased the amount of hours of daylight and darkness until the patients were unknowingly experiencing 24 hours of day and 24 hours of night instead of the normal 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.

The results were that the patients stayed up for 24 hours and then slept for 24 hours convincing scientists that human beings sleep and wake according to the sun.

And if you really think about it, this day and night theory was how our clocks were designed to function as well, according to sunrise and sunset.

So it’s no coincidence that the body just might act a certain way and produce certain chemicals according to the planet that we’ve adapted ourselves to live on for the last several hundred or thousand years.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH YOU?

To wrap it all together, sleep won’t affect your skin immediately. But it does mean the difference between long term health. Get consecutive hours of sleep. Interrupted sleep just isn’t as affective.Our natural body clock coincides and works with the world. Yes, unfortunately we do live on Earth and unfortunately our bodies are in tune with where we live. Why do our bodies have to be so smart?! =)

So remember, the next time you don’t get a good night’s sleep, it doesn’t mean you’re going to break out the next morning. But if you do it over and over again, your body won’t have the necessary resources and energy to properly fight acne either.

How To Clear Your Acne is done completely without pay and without outside help. This is information and experiences that I’ve compiled from more than the last 10 years of my life that I’m offering in order to give back to the community.

I think that people sometimes forget that I’m a normal person just like you and that this isn’t some corporately run office where I’m sitting in an air conditioned office sipping on my Starbucks Latte Grande.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

1. Stop eating the wrong foods.
2. Start eating the acne free diet.

Let me paint you a very obvious picture, if you gave a newborn puppy nothing but junk food and artificial soda to eat its entire life, would you be surprised if this fully grown dog had health problems? Back pain? Whatever the equivalent of dog acne was? Maybe skin rashes?

No, you probably wouldn’t be surprised. This dog had nothing but crap to eat it’s entire life!

Maybe if that dog exercised but you still only fed it chips and coke, would it be better? Maybe, but its health would still be severely hurt because of all this bad food for so much of it’s life.

But what if you fed it healthy, nutritious, fresh food since it was little?

Can you imagine, even if it didn’t work out, how healthy it would be? It probably wouldn’t even have to work out and it would have a nice fur coat, nice heart beat, no diabetes.

Now the tricky part is this …

What is the secret formula that WE, as people, need and don’t need when it comes to an acne free diet?

YES!

Now you’re on the right track.

That’s what I teach.

Unfortunately, that acne free diet conversation won’t fit on this blog but you can find out more about it here:

Buy the Acne Free Diet

So thanks again for reading and I promise you’re on the right track to clearing your acne.

I’ve cured my acne after trying everything, now I’m going to help you clear yours.

Trust me, it can be done. You just have to learn the secrets that these dermatologists, face creams, and commercials will NEVER tell you.

10 Steps to Cure Acne