At first you wouldn't think sleep has much to do with acne. But when you dig deeper a whole different story emerges. Sleep can be a powerful tool for curing acne. Unfortunately the opposite is also true. Not getting enough sleep (sleep deprivation) can aggravate your acne and undermine all the other efforts to cure acne.

Read on to get the whole story.

You need sleep. It's one of your body's physiological requirements. Just as important as food and air. Taken to extreme sleep deprivation can kill you.

But sleep deprivation has serious effects even on 'sub-lethal doses'. It affects both your mental and physical health. Performance on both areas suffers.

Consider sleep as maintenance time for your mind and the body. Both need it to recover from daily stress. Just like a car wears out and eventually breaks if you neglect its maintenance so does your mind and body.

Dr. Mark Hyman explains some of the problems you get yourself into when you don't sleep enough. As you see sleep is not something you should take lightly.

He's spot on on most of the things, but I don' agree with him that we all need minimum 8 hours of sleep. It has more to do with the quality of your sleep than the number of hours you sleep.

There is no magical number of hours you need to sleep to be well rested. It depends on the individual and quality of sleep. Amount of exercise and other stress you put on your body also increases your need for sleep.

So let's define sleep deprivation as simply not sleeping enough.

You know what I'm talking about. The alarm clock goes off and you are still dead tired. You can't get out of bed. You feel tired and need pots of coffee just to make it through the day.

In the end this has more to do with the quality of your sleep than the number of hours you sleep.

The two big evils behind acne are inflammation and insulin resistance. Please see the what causes acne hub for how they cause acne.

Lack of sleep can worsen both of these conditions. And if this is not bad enough sleep deprivation can make your acne worse in indirect ways also.

Inflammation, sleep and acne.

Scientists at University of California discovered that lack of sleep increases the pro-inflammatory cytokines in the blood. These are inflammation markers. The more you have them in your blood the worse the inflammatory condition.

"This study shows that even a modest loss of sleep for a single night increases inflammation, which is a key factor in the onset of cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis." said Dr. Michael Irwin, professor and director of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

Sleepless Night Triggers Immune Response

One of the most dangerous markers (IL-6) was up between 45 to 60%. Alarmingly this happened after a moderate sleep deprivation (2 hours a night for a week).

Insulin resistance and sleep.

Not getting enough sleep makes it more difficult for your cells to take in glucose. This condition is called insulin resistance and is the first step towards diabetes and other serious conditions.

Inflammation and insulin resistance are like two sides of the same coin. One reinforces the other and this creates a vicious cycle. Whether sleep deprivation induced insulin resistance is the result of inflammation we don't know, but the researchers at Boston University School of Medicine concluded the following:

CONCLUSIONS: A sleep duration of 6 hours or less or 9 hours or more is associated with increased prevalence of DM and IGT. Because this effect was present in subjects without insomnia, voluntary sleep restriction may contribute to the large public health burden of DM.

Association of sleep time with diabetes mellitus and impaired glucose

DM means Diabetes Mellitus, the official medical term for diabetes and IGT means impaired glucose tolerance, which simply means insulin resistance. Interestingly sleeping too much had similar effect.

Cutting sleep can cause eating disorders.

The less you sleep the fatter you get. At least that's what many doctors have started to think.

Lack of sleep influences the hormones that regulate glucose metabolism and appetite.

While leptin is a hormone that affects our feelings of fullness and satisfaction after a meal, ghrelin is the hormone that stimulates our appetites. When you suffer from sleep deprivation, your body's levels of leptin fall while ghrelin levels increase. This means that you end up feeling hungrier without really feeling satisfied by what you eat, causing you to eat more and, consequently, gain weight.

http://www.sleep-deprivation.com/articles/effects-of-sleep-deprivation/index.php

While these hormones don't directly affect acne overeating is another way to cause insulin resistance. Plus when you are in this kind of mindless binge do you make the conscious effort to eat healthy foods or you just grab the first snack you get your hands on?

Unfortunately we never crave healthy foods. Only the ones that cause acne.

Stress, acne and sleep.

Sleep deprivation increases stress. Stress leads to more acne.

This is from Wikipedia.

Sleep deprivation was found to enhance activity on the Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (which controls reactions to stress and regulates body functions such as digestion, the immune system, mood, sex, or energy usage) while suppressing growth hormones.

Sleep deprivation

When life throws you into a stressful situation the Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis releases stress hormones. These hormones make chronic stress so dangerous.

Sleep deprivation makes you moody.

Remember the last time you had to cut your sleep short and go to work or college? Were you a happy little camper that day? Or perhaps you were moody and irritable?

Studies have also shown that sleep deprivation reduces performance on mental and cognitive tasks. Though I don't think we need studies to tell us that. We've all had the experience when after a night of poor sleep you couldn't concentrate or get anything done.

If you have a demanding life (who doesn't these days?) and can't get anything done you fall behind. This puts you on the edge and further stresses you. If this spiral keeps on going it can plunge you into depression.

And say hello to more pimples.

Without going into detail I just say that happy and optimistic mind creates happy and healthy body chemistry (hormones and all that stuff). Depressed and pessimistic mind creates the opposite kind of chemistry. It has been said a negative mind can poison the entire body.

Finally when you are in a bad mood you don't feel like eating well or exercise. And bad time and acne was had by all.

So as you can see sleep deprivation can give you acne in many ways. And it can sabotage all your other efforts to cure acne.

Still it would be wrong to say sleep deprivation causes acne.

Health, and by extension clear skin, is a holistic system. Meaning every element affects and is affected by the other elements. You cannot pull out a single elements (such as diet or sleep) and say this is it. This is the cause.

Unfortunately it's not that simple.

Sleep affects every element of health. When you don't get enough sleep your diet heads south, you have less energy to exercise, you become depressed and pessimistic. All of these can make your acne worse.

That's why the only permanent solution to acne is to create a lifestyle that addresses all these aspects. And sleep is an important part of that puzzle. In fact so important that sleep problems can prevent you from getting clear - no matter how good your diet is or how healthy you live otherwise.

So make sure you get your sleep. But not too much either because it has its own harmful effect. You need the right amount of good quality sleep.

Let me ask you few questions

• Do you wake up feeling tired?
• Do you have difficulties staying awake without coffee or other stimulants?
• Do you find it difficult to fall asleep?
• Do you feel like you could use more energy?

All of these are signs your sleep could use a little help. And on the not so positive side you can be sure your sleep problems make it more difficult for you to get clear.

More often than not the real problem is poor quality sleep rather than total sleep time. No matter how much they sleep most people don't get the full benefit because they sleep too 'lightly'.

When you learn to maximize the different phases of sleep and balance your inner sleep clock you can kiss good-bye to your sleep problems. You get the full benefits of sleep and wake up refreshed and full of energy. And at the same time kick acne where it counts.

This is exactly what my new Wake Up To Clear Skin special report teaches you. All you need to do is to follow the 5 simple, easy and free to apply steps. And you'll notice the benefits immediately. If you follow the steps today you'll sleep better already tonight. It's that simple.

Wake Up To Clear Skin is an optional upgrade to the Clear for Life package.

Clear for Life helps you to address the underlying lifestyle issues that lead to acne. It helps you to identify your weak links so you can put your efforts to where they count the most. Once you fix these core problems the body's own healing mechanisms take care of acne. You get clear and you stay clear for the rest of your life.

Finally it comes with motivational tools that help making lifestyle changes easy. So nothing, not even you, stand in your way to clear skin.

Click here to get fix your acne and sleep problems at the same time.