Skin Smarts

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5. Stretch out your sleep

Sleep is free cosmetic medicine. When people ask me what’s the one thing that will make the biggest improvement in how a stressed-out person looks, I say sleep. Nothing exacerbates stress and a haggard appearance like exhaustion. As you may be able to attest from experience, sleep deprivation can make you cranky, depressed and negative. It can make you overeat, over-caffeinated, and cause you to ditch workouts because you’re too tired.

Just about every system in the body (including your inner-beautification capabilities) is affected by the quality and amount of sleep you get each night!

QUIZ: How's your sleep quality?

6. Take a time out

For most people, life is so hyperscheduled, speedy, and “on” that we never do absolutely nothing. It’s rare to set aside time just to be—no agenda, no demands, no plans. Find a comfortable, quiet spot to sit for ten to fifteen minutes every day, stop all of your hustling and bustling…and simply, by yourself, be still. Slowing down in this way, if you do it every day, helps create a sense of spaciousness in your life, a break in the old routine that can open the door to new perceptions, new solutions to old problems, new possibilities. It gives your brain, your psyche, your whole being a break.

MORE: Easy tips to start meditating

7. Cuddle or have sex

Sex makes us happy, and great sex in a loving, intimate relationship makes us happier. Soft, healthy skin is quite sexy on its own. But there is lots more than that going on here. For starters, sex is one of the world’s best stress releasers, which means it doubles as a terrific skin treatment.

MORE: Eight ways sex makes you beautiful 

When you’re making love, all kinds of age-defying, beauty promoting events happen as three seductive hormones spill out of the brain: Beta-endorphine, a natural opiate that contributes to the high you feel, Prolactin, a chemical messenger that gives you the relaxing, tension-zapping, post-coital “ahhhhh” and Oxytocin that promotes feelings of affection and triggers that nurturing instinct. All three hormones are released during orgasm and the net effect is satisfaction and contentment.

MORE: All the ways women have mind-blowing sex

And it’s no surprise that your relaxed state of mind and body allows you to fall asleep rather quickly. Getting all sweaty has direct skin pluses, too, as it bathes your whole body in skin-softening oils, giving you that postcoitus afterglow.