While you were sleeping...

The work your skin does overnight (and how you can help it!) 

We need to sleep at night for key biological functions to happen in our bodies. While we sleep, our body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain our physical health. We use this time to rest, repair and balance in preparation for a new day.

Your skin is your body’s largest organ, so it probably comes as no surprise that it too has a substantial to-do list to fulfil while you’re sleeping. These actions are essential for keeping your skin healthy and functioning currently, but also help to keep your skin looking and feeling its best - there’s a reason they call it ‘beauty sleep’.

What your skin does while you’re sleeping

During the day, your skin works hard to actively try and protect you from the environmental factors such as UVA and UVB rays, dirt and impurities and dehydration. By the time you got to bed, it’s still hard at work, except it is now in recovery and repair mode.

Here are three functions and processes your skin performs at night while you are resting:

Exfoliation

When our skin is perfectly balanced and hydrated it can exfoliate itself, and this process happens faster at night when our skin is biologically configured to ‘reset’. As our skin cells age, they push upward towards the surface of the skin until the lifeless cells naturally shed and fall away – this is what keeps our skin looking radiant and healthier as the new skin cells move in. 

Aiding the removal of the excess dead skin cells helps to smooth the texture of the skin, prevent the pores from being clogged and allows any other skincare products to be more effective and your skin to retain more nutrients.

Unfortunately, due to environmental and lifestyle factors, our skin’s natural exfoliation process can be impacted, and we often need to give it a helping hand to remove these dull, lifeless cells.

Recovering and repairing the barrier function

Your skin has a natural defence system, known as the acid mantle or microbiome.

The acid mantle is the uppermost layer of your skin and is essentially a protective eco-system made up of natural oils, sweat and some dead skin cells. As the name suggests, it is slightly more acidic in nature to prevent harmful contaminants (like environmental pollutants) from penetrating and damaging the skin.

Throughout the night while you are sleeping, your skin rests and rebuilds the acid mantle with your natural oils and secretions like sweat, to help prepare and protect your skin to tackle the elements throughout the coming day. A healthy acid mantle will also help prevent moisture loss and aid nutrient absorption.

Nutrition and Hydration

Your skin is warmer and more permeable to nutrients while you are sleeping. It’s also therefore a great time to top up your nutrients and the hydration in your skin while your microbiome is rebuilding. 

Under your acid mantle is the lipid layer. The lipid layer is made up of oil molecules and fatty acids that help protect the skin from dehydration. If you imagine what happens when you pour oil on top of water, it provides a barrier.

A healthy, intact lipid layer works in a similar way, sitting on top of the skin as a waterproof layer, reducing the amount of water that is lost from cells below it. A healthy lipid barrier also aids the skin’s healing process and is what makes your skin feel smooth, soft and plump.

Unfortunately, as we get older, our skin’s ability to replace lipids is impacted and this is again something that we need to help with the topical application of ingredients such as ceramides, to help retain hydration in the skin.

How can you help your skin get through the ‘night-shift’? 

The best thing you can do is to work with the skin and not against it.

This natural rebuilding process our skin goes through at night is behind two of the key skincare routine features we often talk about as part of our Daily Diet skincare routine...

Not using a night cream and not cleansing in the morning.

We don’t use night creams as they contain emulsifiers that can sit on top of the skin and block and impede the barrier repair process. Instead, we prefer to use plant oils and oil-based balms that allow the skin to breathe and allow the barrier to reform.

We also don’t recommend cleansing with anything other than water in the morning as we don’t want to disturb or wash away this natural protective system.

Have a melting moment every second night 

Working with these natural functions of the skin is also what inspired our latest product release – Midnight Melt.

This night treatment is a pillow-proof serum + mask that gives the skin a helping hand to complete these three functions:

• Exfoliation - the papaya enzymes in Midnight Melt help to literally melt away and dissolve the dead skin cells and debris from the skin. Enzyme exfoliation is one of the most gentle but effective skin solutions so suitable for most skin types.
• Barrier repair – this formula contains both ceramides, as well as a revolutionary all-natural elixir called L22, to help restore the lipid barrier.
• Restores hydration – Midnight Melt also has a very generous splash of natural actives to help restore the hydration in the skin including hyaluronic acid, fucogel, pentavitin and marimoist.

If you think back to the bedtime stories you read as a kid, there was always magic and mystery around night-time. This was the peak time for magical acts, wishes to be granted and transformation to happen.

The same can be said for your skin - just remember to work with the natural processes and functions.