• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, July 31, 2013

Estee Lauder wants women to know that sleep makes them prettier. And while there’s no novelty in a cosmetic company funding scientific research to bolster its products’ claims, Lauder’s latest research doesn’t prove the importance of any of its high-tech ingredients, but rather the power of solid snoozing. 

In clinical trials, researchers at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center found that sleep quality impacts skin function, and that sleep deprivation causes skin to age.

“When Estée Lauder first launched Night Repair in 1982 she said, “Now the term ‘Beauty Sleep’ has a new and significant meaning,” Charisse Ford, Lauder’s SVP/global marketing, tells Marketing Daily via email. “It’s when the importance of night repair was introduced.”

Now, she says, sleep -- especially the lack of it -- is a new global trend, especially among health researchers. “Given the impact of sleep on health, we wanted to understand how sleep was directly impacting skin and skin aging. The goal of this study was to determine the effects of chronic lack of sleep on key skin parameters such as skin dryness and lines.”

The study found that poor sleepers had increased signs of skin aging, as well as slower recovery from injury and sun damage. The poor sleepers in the study also had a worse assessment of their own skin and facial appearance. 

Such research makes it possible for Lauder to say, definitively, that too little sleep does speed up the aging process. “We have never had the scientific findings to prove there is a direct link between lack of sleep and skin health. Now, for the first time, we do.”

She says that the findings, beyond bolstering the marketing for New Advanced Night Repair Synchronized Recovery Complex II, “will have a profound affect on how we study skin and its functions. Even though we can’t give our consumers eight hours of sleep every night, we can help the skin counteract the visible effects of poor sleep.”