Many years ago, I would insist on measuring my body age, and over the years, it has fluctuated around 20. Home equipment, certainly not too accurate, but used to understand their own body changes, or very good.
All these years I've kept my visceral fat low and my muscle mass high, and my energy seems to be better than it was in my 20s:
What's the number one thing you can do to slow down aging?
My answer is - get your beauty sleep!
In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to scientists who studied the circadian rhythm of cells. Why do we humans follow the law of "work at sunrise and rest at sunset"? Because this behavior is written into our genes before we are even born. Almost every cell in the body, including skin cells, contains a set of "clock" genes.
As the largest organ in our body, the "factory Settings" of the skin are very different during the day and night. During the day, we need to work, think and move, and blood stays in the brain, stomach and muscles for a longer time. During sleep, the influence of external factors such as ultraviolet light is minimized, and the body enters a relatively quiet state. At this time, more blood flow to the skin, providing rich nutrients, while growth hormone secretion increases, DNA repair enzyme activity is enhanced, which provides ideal conditions and nutritional support for DNA repair at night.
The damage caused by various factors during the day is accelerated to repair at night, and more collagen, elastin, etc., are also produced during sleep. Night is the irreplaceable prime time for cell repair.
Skin care requires doing the right thing at the right time.
A study of Asian women found that even a single night of sleep deprivation (allowing participants to sleep for only four hours) resulted in a significant decrease in skin hydration [1].
Another study found that people who slept poorly for a long time were more likely to have problems such as uneven skin tone, fine lines, and loss of skin elasticity [2] :
Whether it is lack of sleep, too much light at night, or even too much stress, it will interfere with the normal function of the clock gene, resulting in circadian rhythm disturbance, affecting the repair and regeneration of the skin.
So, even if your soul can stay up at night, your skin can't! If you don't sleep well, then expensive skin care products only provide some "fertilizer" for the skin to repair, which is far from enough.
Do the right thing at the right time and get twice the result with half the effort.
Skin care is, anti-aging, life is also.
Nothing is more important than a good night's sleep. Comfortable sleep is the most gentle care given by nature.
1.Jang SI, Lee M, Han J, Kim J, Kim AR, An JS, Park JO, Kim BJ, Kim E. A study of skin characteristics with long-term sleep restriction in Korean women in their 40s. Skin Res Technol. 2020 Mar;26(2):193-199.
2.OyetakinWhite P, Koo B, Matsui MS, Yarosh D, Fthenakis C, Cooper KD, Baron ED. Effects of Sleep Quality on Skin Aging and Function. 2013.