Ah, aging. The widening waist, dry skin, adult onset acne. Now we can’t even sleep without worrying?
It is something we have all thought about at one time or another. If you are a side or tummy sleeper, smashing your face into a pillow for hours every night is likely not good. I see asymmetries in patients all the time, and we often wonder if the fact we always sleep in a certain position caused some of the asymmetry or aging to happen. Clearly sleeping with your face facing upward is better for your skin.
Sleep wrinkles are something I had never heard about until a few years ago. But it turns out, when you get to be a women of a certain age, how you sleep can affect how you look the next day. And that affect can last for hours. One of my patients had a wrinkle in the glabella (the space between her brows) which she said the botox was not fixing. I checked her botox, and it seemed to be working well. She could not move the muscles. So why the wrinkle? And then after talking to her we figured out it was likely from sleeping.
So why the wrinkle?
First, you must determine if your wrinkle is from movement or from sleep.
- If it is from muscle movement, then botox can help. Typically wrinkles which come from movement will get worse as the day goes on. Common sites: forehead, the “11” between the eyebrows, crows feet, fine lines of the upper lip.
- Sleep wrinkles tend to be worse right when you wake up. Sleep wrinkles can occur anywhere on the face, but frequently are between the eyebrows or on the cheek. And women find as they age, the sleep lines get harder to “iron” out, so the sleep wrinkle can last for hours.
The best remedy against the sleep wrinkle? Short of never sleeping again, training yourself to sleep staring at the ceiling, or finding the fountain of youth, your best bet is prevention. WALAH. Invention of a whole new industry: the special sleep pillow.