Still looking haggard when you wake up? Is there any scientific basis for “beauty sleep”?

It is said that sleep is the best skin care product, but everyone must have experienced waking up with a haggard face and bad complexion, making people feel listless and exhausted. Why is the skin out of sync with the body? What is going on?

In fact, this situation is also related to the special nature of our skin. Among the many tissue structures in the human body, the skin can be described as "tough". Why do we say that? Let's talk about it below.

01. Why do we look tired after resting?

Why do we look tired after resting?

On the one hand, the skin's environment is very harsh. As the outermost layer of the body, the skin is the tissue that is most directly in contact with the external environment. You know, our human body has a high-level adjustment called homeostasis, so the tissues in the body are at least relatively constant in terms of temperature, but the skin is different. The external environment it contacts is ever-changing. When the cold wind blows, the skin is frozen; when the heat wave hits, the skin is heated. Not to mention many other environmental factors, such as wind and sun, and highly penetrating light like ultraviolet rays directly hit our skin, and changes in the external environment will directly affect the skin. As a result, compared with other tissue structures in the body, the skin is more susceptible to damage and aging.

(External pressure on the skin [1])

On the other hand, the skin's nutritional supply is at the end of the human body's circulation. Our nutritional absorption mainly occurs in the gastrointestinal digestive system, and then reaches various parts of the body through the blood circulation. The skin is at the very end, so if a person does not get enough nutrients, the condition of the skin will naturally be worse.

Because of this, the skin's environment is relatively harsh, so it is easy for other parts of the body to recover, but the skin, the hardworking part, is not sufficiently repaired, so a tired look appears on the face.

02. How to deal with tired look?

So, how to deal with this kind of fatigue? I think there are two key points, one is the right time, the other is the right supplement.

We put the right time first, and many people may be curious, when is the best time to do skin care? That's right, it's night time. Let's take a look at why night time is the best time to do skin care.

First of all, it is about time arrangement. We have too many things to do during the day, such as going to work, taking care of the family, etc., and we often do not stay in one place, so skin care during the day is actually far less convenient than at night. After all, at night, it is mainly for rest, so naturally there is more time and place for skin care.

The second most important thing is that nighttime is also more suitable for skin care. The repair of the human body also has key periods, after all, we have a basic macro-environmental factor: day and night. The changes of day and night over countless years have deeply imprinted the basic rules for coping with the changes of day and night into our genes, so from the genetic level, it is determined that nighttime repair is more core. For example, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for the study of the circadian rhythm mechanism, pointing out that organisms have circadian rhythms and revealing the corresponding gene regulation mechanism. These rhythm genes will encode corresponding rhythm proteins to regulate our bodies, so as to better cope with the changes of day and night.

Typical examples are the PER1 and CLOCK genes, which are core clock genes in circadian rhythm regulation.

(Circadian rhythm gene [2])

When the ambient light changes with the day and night, the corresponding signals will be sent through the hypothalamus to make targeted adjustments to aspects of human metabolism during the day and night changes so that people can better adapt to the day and night. For example, our body's core temperature, melanin, cortisol, etc. all show obvious day and night changes [3].

Because of this, the timing of skin repair is critical, and nighttime is an important period for body repair. For example, when we sleep, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid increases a lot, which can accelerate the removal of metabolic waste from our brain. For example, our growth hormone will also be upregulated at night to achieve rest and recuperation for the body.

All this shows that night is a critical period for the body to repair itself. In this case, it is naturally more appropriate to repair our skin at night.

With the right time, the next step is to choose the right skin care products. As we mentioned before, the core reason for a tired face is that facial repair cannot meet the needs of the face. Why is this so? An important factor is oxidative damage.

03. How to improve oxidative damage?

Every cell in our body is carrying out active life activities, and the source of energy required for these life activities is mitochondria. As the energy factory of cells, mitochondria are carrying out oxidative phosphorylation at all times to provide ATP for the body. In this process, high-energy reactive oxygen drives the conversion of ADP to ATP to accumulate energy. This is a basic life activity process.

However, this process is not perfect. There is always active oxygen escaping. These randomly active active oxygen will wreak havoc in cells, and DNA, proteins, and various organelles are all vulnerable. This is the main source of oxidative damage to our cells and one of the main factors of cell damage and aging. On our face, this situation is even worse, because the ultraviolet rays brought by the sun constantly hit the skin, not only directly damaging the skin, but also causing continuous damage to the skin through a series of inflammatory reactions.

Because of this, dealing with oxidation has always been a top priority in high-quality skin care. In order to deal with oxidation, researchers have found many ingredients, such as the classic vitamin C, which is used to reduce oxidation problems. Another example is the familiar superoxide dismutase (SOD), which is also used to deal with oxygen free radicals, a superoxide component.

Of course, professionals are constantly working to find excellent anti-aging ingredients from nature, especially obtaining these ingredients from herbs.

In fact, in recent years, the research and application of circadian rhythm has become a hot topic in the field of skin care. Especially after the circadian rhythm won the Nobel Prize, this mature mechanism has also led the entire skin care field. After all, the need to repair the skin needs to be combined with the scientific discovery of circadian rhythm to better exert its effect. And you in front of the screen also need to pay attention to the circadian rhythm in the skin care process. Choosing night skin care will make the skin care effect more effective.

References:

1 Ferrara, Francesca, Brittany Woodby, Alessandra Pecorelli, Maria Lucia Schiavone, Erika Pambianchi, Jean-Philippe Therrien, Hina Choudhary, and Giuseppe Valacchi. "Additive effect of combined pollutants to UV induced skin OxInflammation damage. Evaluating the protective topical application of a cosmeceutical mixture formulation." Redox biology 34 (2020): 101481.

2 Fagiani, Francesca, Daniele Di Marino, Alice Romagnoli, Cristina Travelli, Davide Voltan, Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, Marco Racchi, Stefano Govoni, and Cristina Lanni. "Molecular regulations of circadian rhythm and implications for physiology and diseases." Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy 7, no. 1 (2022): 41.

3 Logan, Ryan W., and Colleen A. McClung. "Rhythms of life: circadian disruption and brain disorders across the lifespan." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 20, no. 1 (2019): 49-65.