Is your “beauty sleep” robbing you of your beauty? True, sleep hours are great for your rejuvenating your skin and body overall, but, did you ever consider that every night you may be facing a challenging beauty obstacle while you sleep? If you are still sleeping with cotton pillowcases, you are allowing long-term damage to result in your hair and skin. Loads of precious moisture is escaping our skin at night, and our cotton pillowcases are right there ready to soak it up. What can we do to protect our faces at night?

How Your Pillowcase Causes More Wrinkles and Fine Lines

Moisture is key in delaying the more obvious signs of aging. Spending many hours each night with your face pressed firmly against cotton can cause a serious loss of moisture and puts unnecessary stress on your skin. Cotton absorbs moisture and natural oils in skin and hair.

How to Prevent Skin Moisture Loss from Your Pillowcase:

  1. Protect: Moisturize before bed (more than you would during the day, we prefer a heavier type of moisturizer)
  2. Switch your pillowcase to a moisture-repellent material, such as, silk or microfiber. There are many that you can find online.
  3. Sleeping on your back is an obvious best solution, nonetheless, if you just can’t avoid sleeping on your stomach or side, going with option 1 and 2 above is your best program.

Best Pillowcase for Skin

Switch to sleeping on a smooth-fitting, silk or satin fabric pillowcase instead of a cotton pillowcase. These materials will not bunch up under your skin, so you may even be spared those lovely morning creases you love so much.  Silk/Satin fabrics allow for extra slip, preventing hair breakage and wrinkle formation.

The Pillowcase Bacteria Problem

Also, make a habit of changing your pillowcases often, so that you’re not resting your healthy skin on top of multiple nights of bacteria for hours on end. You can flip your pillows over on days you’re not changing them to extend your time with them before needed washes.

Sleep Wrinkles: Beauty Sleep Gone Wrong

Stop squishing your face into that pillow. Your face is on that pillow for approximately 2,500 hours per year. The wrong pillowcase can feel like it is ironing wrinkles into that fresh skin. Side-sleepers can use a firm pillow and strategically position your head so the lower half of your face rarely touches it. Otherwise, you may exacerbate the nasolabial fold wrinkles that tend to come with age. It takes practice, but is worth implementing this new habit to your skin regime.

Hair Breakage

As we sleep, our bodies toss and turn every so often, which creates friction between your hair and pillowcase. If you have cotton sheets, remember, cotton absorbs moisture and natural oils from our skin and hair. When there is friction, it causes your hair to snag on the cotton fibers. Silk and satin are much smoother than cotton and allows your skin and hair to slide effortlessly across the pillowcase, thus limiting the damaging effects. Even our eyelashes can be in jeopardy.

If you’re a side sleeper using cotton pillowcases, you may be damaging your lashes while you sleep. Typically, side sleepers have bent, thin lashes on the side they lay on. Simply switching to a silk or satin pillowcase allows your face to glide across the pillowcase without catching any lashes.

collagen supplement

How to Strengthen Your Skin During Sleep

Night and day, your skin needs support to combat the aging. Nourish your skin from the inside as well as the outside.

  • Use a heavier moisturizer before bed.
  • Supplement with collagen daily to strengthen skin. Some reports suggests that taking collagen right before bed helps with collagen absorption and skin healing.

Collagen is that very important protein that gives our skin elasticity and strength, and the natural production of it slows as we age which causes the cell structures to weaken. This results in fragile skin that lacks the fresh elasticity protection inherent and wrinkles start setting in as we lose collagen in our bodies.

Any repeated motion, such as a frown, smile, or activity such as sleeping in a compromised positions will result in fine lines and wrinkles. Taking the steps above, while using a good moisturizer and collagen supplement is a fine strategy for slowing those wrinkles from forming.

Taking steps to ensure a healthier future for your skin is the best preventative way to make sure that your skin stays as fresh and hydrated for as long as possible.

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