I know we call it ‘Beauty Sleep’, but can someone please tell me why I wake up droopy-eyed and puffy, with creases and folds splayed across my face even after peacefully sleeping the recommended 8 hours? And is it really true that how you sleep can cause wrinkles?
I am not one to fall asleep without removing my makeup and I religiously stick to my night-time skincare routine, but I can never really seem to avoid waking up with a ‘pillow face’. What more does a girl have to do? It’s easy for fiction to become facts in the beauty world. Remember the beauty myth that frequent hair trims make your hair grow faster? What about the adage that drinking 8 glasses of water will cure and hydrate dry skin? Today we’ll debunk the popular advice that says denotes how you sleep can cause wrinkles.
How Your Sleeping Positions Cause Wrinkles
I bet you are familiar with the obvious elements that contribute to faster aging like sunlight and UV exposure, poor diet and sleep patterns, genetics, and smoking among others. For some others, like how you sleep can cause wrinkles, and tend to fly low-key under the radar. Celebrity esthetician Renée Rouleau cautions that sleeping positions are the second cause of wrinkles. She says that squishing our face into a pillow while sleeping 2500hours per year is similar to literally ironing wrinkles into the skin.
Sleep wrinkles and expression wrinkles
Sleep wrinkles form when your face is pressed against a sleep surface causing a distortion. The wrinkles are majorly influenced by how long you spent sleeping in a certain position. We all unconsciously constantly shift our sleeping positions at night but the number of changing our positions decreases as we age. Guess what else reduces as we age? You got it, our skin’s elasticity and thickness.
You can spot sleep wrinkles when you examine your forehead, cheeks, and lips. They are prone to be perpendicular to expression lines. Why not use cosmetic injectables to fix these wrinkles? Sadly, even though injectables like Botox may temporarily improve the wrinkles they won’t have much effect as the sleep wrinkles aren’t caused by muscle contractions. I hope you can now begin to tell how you sleep can cause wrinkles and compromise your complexion. To add more salt to the injury, they worsen over time.
Expression lines, on the other hand, form because of muscle contraction whenever you smile, frown, squint, or purse your lips. When you frequently do these, you develop lasting lines over time. But it’s nothing a little quick Botox injection can’t fix.
One study from the Sleep Foundation shows that an average of 54.1% of the population sleep on their side, 37.5% sleep on their backs, and there’s 7.3% of weirdos who sleep on their stomachs.
1. The lateral sleeper (side sleeper)
I heard a rumor that a dermatologist can tell which side you favor sleeping on by one look at your face. Why do you sometimes find one side of your face to be more photogenic than the other? Naturally, our faces are asymmetrical, meaning you’ll have one side with prominently developed bones and another that’s a little bleh. The side that you predominantly sleep on will crease more because as you sleep it has less underlying support. This will cause your ‘less favorable’ side to appear flat due to volume loss.
Sleeping on one side more over the other creates vertical wrinkles that run down your cheeks, and chin, and makes expression wrinkles around your lips and forehead more visible. It becomes easy to see that how you sleep can cause wrinkles and switching up positions during the night could take you a step closer to possessing youthful smooth skin.
2. The stomach sleeper
This is the worst of all the sleeping positions. You create constant pressure on your body and face when your skin is pushed up against your pillow for hours as you sleep. Over time you’ll begin to notice the creation of permanent fine lines around your forehead, cheeks, and lips. Puffy morning eyes will also be frequent the more you sleep on your belly. This is because when you are a stomach sleeper, your heart and head tend to lie on the same level causing more blood to flow into your face. Don’t get me started on how much bacteria pillowcases hoard. I would avoid this sleeping position at all costs especially if you have acne-prone skin. Swap out your cotton pillowcases for silk and satin to cut down those wrinkles, vertical imprints, and lines that run down your face every morning.
3. The back sleeper
I know sleeping on your back seems uncomfortable and may take time to get used to, but if 53-year-old-pop star Jennifer Lopez swears by this anti-aging practice it’s worth a shot. It prevents wrinkles, puffy eyes, and chest sleep-lines as it relieves the pressure on your skin. Sleeping on your back allows your skincare products to penetrate your skin without rubbing off on your pillowcase. It is also ideal if you struggle with acne as it prevents dirt and oils from your hair and scalp from clogging your facial skin’s pores. Not only is it the best sleeping position for preventing back and neck pain, but it also keeps your internal organs unstressed and aligned.
As we age, our joints and necks require more support as we sleep. Specialized pillows with cradling designs that support your neck while your head faces up may come in handy. Consider investing in these body pillows if you are not one of the lucky chosen few capable of naturally sleeping on their back. You should be cautious when increasing your neck and joint support with pillows as too many or flat pillows could worsen your problems. The top doctor recommended head elevation degree while sleeping is between 20 and 30. Try pillows with memory foam add a satin or silk pillowcase and kiss those pesky wrinkles goodbye.
Sleeping is one factor among many that can cause unwanted long-lasting effects on our skin’s overall health. Aside from having difficulties falling asleep, night terrors, and sleep paralysis we now also must come to terms that how you sleep can cause wrinkles. Sleep sure does cause a lot of problems for something so necessary and natural! What beauty sleep tips have you experimented with? Share with us in the comment section below.
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