Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Clear skin and aging beautifully conversations, trainings and challenges by Dr. Stacey Shillington ND.
Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Embracing the Night: Unlocking the Sleep-Acne Connection for Radiant Health with Dr. Stacey Shillington ND
Struggling with insomnia, I, Dr. Stacey Shillington ND, experienced firsthand the toll that sleepless nights can take on one's skin health. My journey of tossing and turning morphed into a quest for understanding the sleep-acne connection, and what I discovered was a game-changer. This podcast episode is a deep exploration into how our slumber—or lack thereof—can lead to an unwelcome landscape on our faces. We're not talking about simple sleep tips; this is a holistic revolution, where nurturing your nervous system takes center stage in the fight against acne.
Let's face it, counting sheep just doesn't cut it when you're aiming for that flawless complexion. High-quality Z's are pivotal, but it's the elusive REM and deep sleep that are the true unsung heroes here. I'll guide you through my own strategies that transformed my nighttime ritual, from the tech-savvy Oura Ring that tracks every restful moment to the simple yet effective power of a pitch-black room. It's not just about clocking in more hours; it's about enhancing every second of your sleep to let your skin—and your health—truly flourish.
By now, you might be thinking that this all sounds like a dream, but I assure you, it's a reality within reach. As we wrap up, I invite you to dive even deeper with my free clear skin masterclass and hormonal acne healing program, where we tackle everything from the gut to the mind in pursuit of that perfect glow. So whether you're a night owl looking to mend your ways or you're simply on a quest for radiant health, this episode is your call to embrace the night and wake up to a brighter, clearer tomorrow.
Check out my new FREE Training: Clear Skin Mastery, where I share the different types of acne and how to treat each one. Click here to watch it now.
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Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello and welcome to the Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr Stacey Shillington. I'm a naturopathic doctor. For the last 18 years, I've been helping women clear their acne. This podcast is designed for me to share with you my wisdom and my experience so that your clear skin journey is as easy as possible. I've been there. I've watched thousands of women go on their clear skin journey. I deeply understand the root causes of acne. Most importantly, I understand the solutions. So welcome, welcome. I'm excited to guide you on your clear skin journey.
Speaker 1:This podcast is all about sleep. It's part of my foundational series, where I'm talking about the most important health foundations that need to be in place on a clear skin journey. Often we're addressing some very deep imbalances when it comes to healing acne, and when we have our foundations in place, including sleep, hydration, nutrition, exercise and utilizing light optimally, this sets the stage for easier healing in the body. So I'm excited to talk about sleep, because sleep is something that I have struggled with throughout my life. I've spent many sleepless nights and I'm going to tell you my sleep story, but I want you to know I understand insomnia deeply. I've spent many nights tossing and turning and crying in frustration, just perplexed that my body didn't know how to perform one of the most innate activities it could ever encounter. And so I get it. If you struggle with sleep, I send you so much healing energy and loving energy. If you don't struggle with sleep, I think this podcast can still help you, because I'm going to tell you how to achieve optimal sleep. It's not necessarily about sleeping more. It's about sleeping optimally and getting the REM sleep and getting the deep sleep. That's really going to rejuvenate and heal your body.
Speaker 1:So I stopped sleeping. In my late twenties I was going through a really tough emotional time. I was in a really bad marriage with an alcoholic. There was emotional abuse going on. I knew I needed to get out of the relationship but I was scared. And that's when I stopped sleeping and I really didn't start to sleep until my early forties again.
Speaker 1:Of course I slept here and there. It's not that I didn't sleep at all, but I would say you know, it was rare for me to have seven nights of good sleep. That didn't happen. And I would say in my thirties I probably only got two nights of sleep a week. I would sleep a couple hours here and there, but I never got a solid sleep and I would toss and turn, I would cry, I was, I was a wreck.
Speaker 1:And because of all this lack of sleep, my nervous system was just raw. And this this contributed a lot to my acne, contributed a lot to my health issues, obviously, and at the time I didn't realize how much I needed to heal my nervous system. I just I did not get it. I tried to heal every other system in my body. You know perfectly, I ate a perfect diet, I took all the best supplements, I exercised, I, you know, did all the right things, but I wasn't healing my nervous system. It was the missing piece of my puzzle and it wasn't until I got out of some emotionally abusive relationships and situations that I was finally able to heal my nervous system, heal my sleep and, of course, my skin followed with that. So I get it.
Speaker 1:I get poor sleep and I've thought a lot about poor sleep. And when we don't sleep well, our skin does not look optimal, and we have research now that backs that up. We know that when there's poor sleep, we're experiencing reduced collagen production and more wrinkles. We're experiencing dark circles under our eyes. We're experiencing more inflammation throughout our eyes. We're experiencing more inflammation throughout our entire body, including the skin, and I want you to remember that acne is inflammation.
Speaker 1:If you're prone to acne, often that's how the body expresses inflammation, and with poor sleep we also experience pale, dull complexions, and there are several studies that show a strong correlation between poor sleep and increased acne, and these studies show that it's mostly due to dysregulated cortisol. So obviously, when we're not sleeping properly, our cortisol is going to be dysregulated. This can lead to increased oil production in the skin, which leads directly to acne. And then, of course, we also see increased inflammation. Inflammation is acne, and when we don't sleep we see more of it. So without adequate sleep, it's very difficult for the body to heal because we are fighting an increase in the causes of the root causes of acne A bit of a tongue twister there. But when we don't have adequate sleep, we're seeing increased cortisol, increased inflammation, insulin dysregulation and a dysregulated immune system. All of these things are root causes of acne, and when they're worsened by not getting enough sleep, it's really difficult to heal the body and to heal acne.
Speaker 1:So sleep is one of those foundational elements that needs to be in place to attain optimal health and really, for those of us that are prone to acne, we need to optimize the health of our body to get clear skin for good. All right, and it's. You know, this is one of the things that I think many people don't understand and I certainly didn't understand this for many years but it's not necessarily just about getting more sleep. You know, if you're fatigued, if you've lost sleep due to insomnia, it's not that now you need to get 10 hours of sleep every single night. That's not the case. Instead, it's about getting high quality sleep. So high quality sleep, that means that when you are asleep, you are getting an adequate amount of REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement, and you're getting an adequate amount of deep sleep, and these are the two elements that are really going to make a difference when it comes to optimizing your health and clearing your skin. So when we get high quality sleep, it improves our resistance to stress and regulates our cortisol levels, it lowers inflammation, it enhances our cognitive function and memory, it improves our immune function and it also promotes healthy blood glucose and insulin levels, and this is important because many acne patients suffer from insulin dysregulation and when insulin and blood sugar are regulated automatically, acne is going to start to reduce. And when our cortisol is all over the place because it is cortisol's job to regulate blood sugar and insulin blood sugar and insulin are automatically going to be all over the place. So sleep is critical to regulate all these levels.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people ask me so how much sleep do you need? So the largest sleep study ever conducted was done on 1.1 million subjects over a period of three years. This was a massive study. It was one of the studies that really helped us understand sleep, but it shows that it's quality, not quantity of sleep that matters most, and the research found that participants who slept only six and a half hours a night lived longer than those who slept eight hours a night, and this is because the quality of their sleep was actually better than those people that slept more. So this is so interesting to me, and when I read about this, it was like a huge aha for me, because I was like, okay, I don't necessarily need to get eight hours of sleep every single night, because I would have difficulty getting that amount of sleep, and it became an additional stress for me If I went to bed at midnight and I woke up at 6 am and I was like, oh, I didn't get enough sleep. That's not necessarily true. And when I started tracking my sleep, that's when I really understood that you know what, in six hours, I am getting a lot of great quality sleep, and that just reduced my stress levels, and I was able to sleep even better after that, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:So how do you get high quality sleep? So we now know that there's a lot of ways that we can regulate our body physiology to really enhance the quality of our sleep, and one of the main ways that we do this is by regulating the type of light that we're exposed to, because by doing this, we're able to affect our body's circadian rhythm and adjust it in such a way that it's going to facilitate high quality sleep. So we are living in a world where we're being exposed to a lot of artificial light. We often use energy efficient LED lights that actually emit a lot of blue light. We're also looking at our devices all the time, and our devices emit a lot of blue light. So what blue light does is, when it reaches our eyes, it actually inhibits the production of a chemical called melatonin, and melatonin is incredibly important for us to sleep. Without adequate melatonin, we're just not able to sleep. So by overexposing ourselves to blue light, which is often present in our overhead lights, which is present in our device, we are actually shutting off the chemicals in our body that are allowing us to sleep. So by regulating our exposure to light, we are going to optimize the amount of sleep that we're getting.
Speaker 1:So some of the things that I do is I block this blue light out a minimum of two hours before bed, and the way that I do this is by wearing blue blocking glasses. My glasses are actually orange. They block out everything other than light wavelength, which is optimal for sleeping. It's optimal for melatonin production. Optimal for sleeping. It's optimal for melatonin production. And I also dim my lights before bedtime. I do not want any of that LED light. I don't want to be exposed to it at all, because I do not even want to glimpse at blue light. I also do not use my device for a couple hours before bed and I use blackout curtains because I want to sleep in complete darkness, and some people even go as far as to cover any led lights that are exposed in their bedroom with tape. You want to sleep in a completely dark environment. You don't want to have light coming in from anywhere, you don't want to sleep with a nightlight and, in fact, I also use eye cover as well, because I'm in complete darkness from the time I go to sleep until I wake up, which is around 6 am. You know, that's my optimal time of sleep. That's my optimal window. Anyways, you know, I really manage the amount of light that I'm exposed to and the type of light that I'm exposed to, and this has made a huge difference in the quality of my sleep.
Speaker 1:I notice when I, you know, maybe I'm watching something really interesting and I'm looking at my screen and I don't turn it off when I should because I'm too, you know, I'm too caught up in what I'm watching. I notice it in my sleep. And I notice it in my sleep because I track my sleep every single night and I've been doing this for a long time now. I use an aura ring and it keeps me really honest about my sleep and I would not give up that tracking anymore. Because, number one, I'm so sensitive about my sleep, it's so important to me. I understand what my body's like without sleep and what my body's like with sleep. Sleep. It's so important to me. I understand what my body's like without sleep and what my body's like with sleep, and it's so important to me to get good sleep that I always track it. I look at my tracking every morning and I understand what I need to do at this point to shift my sleep so that it's really optimized.
Speaker 1:Another thing that's really important, too, is avoid eating late at night. You want to have your last meal three to four hours before you go to bed. You want things to be as digested as possible so you're not experiencing bloating, you're not experiencing the heaviness, and when you're tracking your sleep, you can see the difference. If you eat a big meal and then go to sleep, you'll see what your sleep quality looks like, as opposed to when you eat a couple hours before bed. You fully digest and then you go to sleep. Your sleep quality is completely different. Also, keeping your room cool at night. You don't want your room to be too hot. That's going to be uncomfortable. My preference is to have a cool room and to have nice warm covers on top of me. Especially in the winter, that's when I have my deepest, my best sleeps and, true, it's difficult to get out of bed in the morning because your bed is so warm and cozy and outside of your bed it's cold. But if you can get over that, that's how you're going to really optimize your sleep.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't do this, but some people swear by using mouth tape. When you use mouth tape, you breathe through your nose when you're sleeping instead of through your mouth, and this actually increases levels of oxygen that go to your brain, and some people just notice a night and day difference when they do this. I don't know why I haven't tried this yet. I probably should, but my sleep's been really good without doing this, but this is something that I wanted to mention because so many people love doing it. The other thing is that you know I like to use sleep enhancing supplements, so magnesium is one of the supplements that really helps the body relax. So many of us are deficient in magnesium, and when you take it especially magnesium glycinate you can really feel a difference in your body's ability to release and relax. There's other great supplements that I love as well.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of theanine. If you're in a really bad sleep cycle, I mean, you just need to reboot your sleep cycle and your circadian rhythm. Often using melatonin for a short period of time can be beneficial. I also like L-theanine. I like GABA. I love passion flower. There's some really great sleep enhancing herbs. I don't tend to use a lot of valerian. I find some people can actually, you know, get stimulated by valerian, so that's something I don't typically use.
Speaker 1:So the other tip that I really love is have a regular waking time, even on the weekend. So in my perfect life, I get up at 6 am every single day, and that's when I feel the best. And when my sleep cycle starts to shift out of regularity, it's usually because I've allowed my morning wake up time to slip a little bit. Maybe I'll sleep until 7 or 8 am and I'll notice that the next night my sleep will not be as great. Having a regular wake up time consistently is really helpful to optimize your sleep, and Even if you're a great sleeper, this can be very, very beneficial.
Speaker 1:The other thing is to regulate your blood sugar throughout the day, having three solid meals. What this does is it regulates your blood glucose levels, it regulates your insulin levels and this is going to help regulate your cortisol levels. And when you have regulated cortisol levels, you are going to be able to sleep without waking during the night. So this is this has been very important for me on my journey to reclaim my sleep is to be sure that I'm eating regularly throughout the day, and this is one of the big tips that I give to all my acne patients, because imbalanced blood sugar and insulin is such a root cause of acne. Doing this is going to directly help your acne in addition to helping your sleep, reducing stress. So we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. But really the reason why I lost my sleep for so many years is because my nervous system became severely dysregulated.
Speaker 1:And by re-regulating my nervous system, learning how to love myself, learning how to calm down, learning how to transition out of survival mode this is the most important thing to healing your sleep, without a doubt, and this is the most important aspect to acne as well it's getting out of that survival nervous system into a place where your body can actually heal, because when you're in stress, when you're in survival, it's into a place where your body can actually heal, because when you're in stress, when you're in survival, it's not a time for your body to heal. It's time for your body to be vigilant to be on guard because it really believes that it's being threatened. Your body thinks something out there is actually threatening its life. You're in stress. You're in survival. When you can get out of that place, that's when you're actually able to release, let down and have high quality sleep.
Speaker 1:Proper nutrition when we're deficient in certain vitamins and certain minerals, it's going to be difficult for our body to relax. Like I mentioned earlier, many of us are deficient in magnesium. When we actually supplement with magnesium, our bodies are able to relax. Similarly, if you're deficient in zinc, you may experience restless leg syndrome or something like that. That just makes it impossible for your body to release. So making sure your nutrition is on track is such a huge foundational step for optimizing your sleep and, as I've mentioned already, tracking your sleep.
Speaker 1:This has been a game changer for me to really understanding how good my sleep is, understanding the quality of my sleep and also which factors impact the quality of my sleep. So I'm able to experiment with this, and this is what I did for many months until I got to the place where I am now. I experimented. This is what I did for many months until I got to the place where I am now I experimented. This is what I would do I'd be like. So how's my sleep going to look if I stop exposing myself to blue light for three hours before I go to bed? So I do that for an entire week. I'd look at my sleep pattern compared to my sleep pattern not doing it, and I would see a huge difference. And I would do that with taking sleep enhancing supplements as well, and I would see how that affected my sleep. I would, you know, see what would happen if I didn't wake up at my regular time, if I slept in, and I would see how that impacted the quality of my sleep. So I'm at a point now where I get two hours of REM every night and two hours of deep sleep every night. I'm not necessarily sleeping eight hours, I'm probably sleeping about six and a half, but I'm happy with that. I have more time during the day. It's more productive time because I'm feeling more rested, my brain is in a better place, my energy is in a better place and my skin looks better too. All right.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I really want to impress is that optimizing sleep can take time. It doesn't happen overnight. I know so many of my patients. They come to me, they want a supplement. They want some melatonin, some L-theanine, some magnesium and they want to be sleeping perfectly. It doesn't happen like this. This is because we have to optimize systems in the body in order to optimize sleep. We need to heal the nervous system. We need the nervous system to understand that it's safe in order to sleep optimally. We also need to optimize nutrition in the body. We need to heal the gut. We need to heal the gut lining, ensure you're eating the proper nutrients and absorbing the proper nutrients so that you can sleep properly, and this takes time. Sometimes.
Speaker 1:Taking melatonin for a period of time can help reset the circadian rhythm. This can be helpful, but it's not going to bring you immediately to optimal sleep, and really the most important thing that you can do is focus on getting your nervous system out of survival. So if you can't sleep, work on relaxing the nervous system. It's a perfect time to do it. It's quiet, it's dark, you have alone time, you're not going to be bothered by anybody, and I think this is one of the things that really shifted for me the most.
Speaker 1:I stopped panicking when I couldn't sleep. I started falling into meditation. Instead, I do a yoga nidra practice, I would remain calm and I'd enjoy the stillness. And I just say to myself if you can't sleep, heal your nervous system. Practice feeling safe practice, you know, connecting to a feeling of joy and happiness, and I think that that is actually what helped me sleep the most, what helped me regain my sleep, and then, when you do eventually optimize your sleep, healing is going to happen. Your body is going to have so many resources to draw from when it comes to healing your skin.
Speaker 1:It's really magical. Sleep is magical. I understand if you're not getting sleep right now. It can be really traumatizing, but there's a way to get your sleep back and it's all the things that I've just explained to you. So I hope that this podcast has helped. If you want some more clear skin tips, be sure to watch my free clear skin masterclass, where I share my four pillars of clear skin. And if you're ready to start your clear skin journey right now, I've just launched my new hormonal acne healing program. The links for both are in the show notes. I am sending you so much love and so much positive healing energy, and I really want you to optimize your sleep and experience the joy of sleeping deeply every single night. So have a beautiful day and thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you soon.