The human body does an immense amount of work overnight while sleeping, which makes this period perfect for detoxifying the body’s systems and glowing the skin. The human body does much of this detoxification on its own as it repairs and rebuilds its own parts during sleep, but there are things that can be done to amplify and accelerate this process.
So how to do an overnight detox for body and skin? The best ways to detoxify overnight are as follows:
- Drink a glass of water prior to bed
- Refrain from ingesting caffeine, cannabis, alcohol, or other drugs prior to sleep
- Get at least 7-8 hours of sleep
- Refrain from eating anything 2-3 hours before sleep
- Stretch before and after sleeping
Throughout the day, there are plenty of things you can do to make sure your body stays cleansed.
At night, the body detoxifies itself while you sleep, and you can make the most of this natural detox time by taking a few simple steps.
Read on to find out how to detoxify your body overnight.
Drink Water (or Cranberry Juice) Prior to Bed
What to drink to detox overnight? You don’t need to buy any expensive detox mixes. Water can do all the magic for you to have an effective overnight detox!
This sounds simple, but drinking a glass of water both before and after sleeping overnight is one of the best things you can do to help your body and your skin to detoxify themselves.
It has been known for ages that water has many benefits to human health. The human body is comprised mostly of water.
The human body uses water as a lubricant for the skeletal system and as a way to transport oxygen throughout the circulatory system.
Water is also used in the bloodstream as a transport for toxins to be excreted from the body.
In the excretory system (primarily the kidneys), water functions as an important transport to remove the body’s waste material via the kidneys to prevent the build-up of toxins.
The function of the kidneys is vital for detoxication; if the kidneys do not function, the body will become overloaded with toxins and die. The kidneys must have water to perform this filtering role.
In order for your body to be able to detoxify itself to its greatest potential overnight while you’re sleeping, you need to make sure that you’re well-hydrated before bedtime.
Once your body gets a full restoration, your skin naturally will glow the next day. Drinking a glass of water an hour or so before bed helps keep you hydrated throughout the night during sleep.
Cranberry juice is a great detoxifying alternative to water that you can drink before bed (which also aids in kidney health). It will increase hydration while also introducing antioxidant properties to the body to aid in detoxification. These antioxidants will also slow down skin aging in the long run.
Note: For some people, drinking water right before bed may cause an interrupted sleep cycle due to the need to urinate in the middle of the night, a medical syndrome called nocturia. In this case, it can be prudent to drink more water earlier in the afternoon or evening, rather than an hour before bed.
Avoid Caffeine, Nicotine, Cannabis, and Alcohol Prior to Sleep
In our go-go-go culture, it has become commonplace for people to drink caffeinated beverages late into the night, and many people also indulge in other intoxicating substances such as cannabis and alcohol.
However, your body and your skin will get inflamed if intaking any of these substances, which can cause pimples, muscle acnes, and headaches for the next day(s).
Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and even cannabis are popular “soft drugs” for a reason and as the negative consequences don’t show immediately, it’s easy for people to neglect the problems.
But it’s important to remember that these substances all introduce toxins to the body that must be purged while sleeping. So if you’re trying to detox, you should refrain.
If your body is spending extra effort trying to purge alcohol, THC, nicotine, caffeine, and other toxins from your system, it wastes energy trying to clean up the drugs instead of putting that same energy to use repairing your brain, your skin or rebuilding cells.
Overall, it makes your body less efficient at detoxifying itself.
Alcohol, in particular, disrupts your liver’s attempts to purify the body of toxins during sleep.
For the body to break down alcohol, it will have to pass more liquid through urination, which can cause severe dehydration. This can lead to some direct damage to the skin.
Besides, having to strip alcohol from the body’s systems overnight causes the liver to have to work overtime, reducing its overall effectiveness in the detoxification of organic bodily wastes.
These substances are also known for disrupting sleep cycles, and sleep, as we will discuss in a moment, is important to the detox process.
Alcohol has been shown to cause issues with your sleep cycle. Nicotine and caffeine are both stimulants that can make it more difficult for you to go to sleep naturally, and cannabis is disruptive to the sleep cycle, as THC reduces dreaming.
If your body is not able to perform a normal sleep cycle, the organs cannot function to detoxify the body overnight at full capacity.
Besides, an interrupted sleep cycle may result in an increase in cortisol which can lead to skin inflammation, skin dullness and conditions like acne.
Besides, caffeine and high sugar level alcohols can also lead to excess skin oil, flaky dryness, enlarged pores, and fine lines. These damages are not reversible by simply applying some skincare.
Get Plenty of Sleep – the simplest and most effective way!
One of the best things you can do to help your body and skin detox overnight is to make sure you get plenty of sleep to begin with. Sleep deprivation has many negative effects on the body.
Because the sleep cycle is the time of day that your body really buckles down and purges itself of toxins accumulated throughout the day, reducing the time of that cycle reduces the detoxifying effects of sleep.
The amount of sleep that people need is a matter of some debate, but it’s generally accepted that people should receive at least eight hours of sleep a night (a full two hours more than the average American adult gets). 4 in 10 Americans get less than seven hours of sleep a night.
There are many apps and devices available now, such as Awoken and Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, that can help monitor how much a person sleeps and how good their sleep was.
Since sleep is the key to detoxifying overnight, monitoring sleep hygiene, and making sure you get enough of it, is one way to help your body and skin detox.
Refrain from Eating Prior to Sleep
In general, eating anything two to three hours before bed should be avoided.
Not only does eating right before bed increase your likelihood of indigestion, but it also keeps the body from performing detoxification and other maintenance duties in order to break down and transport food instead.
The process of breaking down food for use by the body produces a lot of toxins and excess waste in the body, and the body has to put forth extra effort in order to purge these toxins and facilitate the digestive process.
Sleep is not meant for digestion; rather, it is intended to be a stasis state in which the body can repair its higher systems such as the nerve system.
Instead of eating right before bed, make sure your last meal of the day is a light one such as a salad or a small helping of protein and vegetables and occurs several hours before sleep.
If you find yourself getting hungry in the hours before sleep, you can try adding extra protein to your supper, since protein increases satiation and reduces hunger pangs.
If you refrain from eating prior to sleep, your body will have more biological energy to rejuvenate your skin, clear your eyes, restore your mucus membranes, and strengthen your bones.
If you don’t, your body will spend half the night trying to digest your food instead of detoxifying itself.
Stretch Before and After Sleeping
Stretching is an important part of your detoxification process both prior to and after sleeping, as it helps to improve circulation.
Circulation of the blood is how the body transports and removes wastes and toxins from the liver and kidneys, so the better your circulation, the more efficiently the body and skin can detoxify itself.
Increased blood flow is also important for every other process the body undertakes during sleep.
Since sleep is when your body is doing its hardest work in regenerating cellular structures, purging waste, and maintaining nervous system effectiveness, it needs a fully functioning transport system to help facilitate these repairs.
Stretching prior to sleep helps you sleep better and more comfortably, which also aids overall sleep hygiene and increases your ability to effectively sleep.
By driving more blood into the muscular system, stretching helps maintain fluid homeostasis throughout the body.
This is supportive to the kidneys, liver, and heart by increasing overall circulation and facilitating the body’s natural detoxification processes.
This circulation is what allows the body to remove toxins from its own organs.
Detoxifying Overnight Means Letting the Body and Skin Detox Itself
The body is an amazing biological machine, and it can actually do the heavy lifting of detoxification on its own if given enough support through healthy living habits.
By eating right, avoiding recreational drugs prior to bed, making sure you get plenty of shut-eye, stretching, and staying hydrated, you can allow your body and skin to do most of the work to detoxify itself while you’re fast asleep.
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