Fine lines and wrinkles may age you, but not all wrinkles form the same way. In your quest to find the ultimate anti-aging solution, it’s important to understand two key factors: what are sleep wrinkles and how can you prevent them?
Expression or dynamic wrinkles occur as a result of muscle contraction with facial expressions such as frown lines between your eyebrows, horizontal forehead lines and crow’s feet, which are caused by squinting. Photos below…
Sleep lines or sleep wrinkles have nothing to do with muscle contraction or expression and are caused by the repeated pressing of our face into a solid surface (often our pillow) while we sleep. These lines are usually more vertical than expression lines and can be found on forehead, cheeks, chins, etc.
What Causes Sleep Lines?
Dermatologist, Dr. Samuel Stegman, was one of the first to observe that most people tend to exhibit these creases and imbalances on the side they prefer to sleep on and made a habit of telling them which side they slept on. Sleeping on their sides (and therefore their faces) was causing “sleep wrinkles”. As our skin ages these sleep lines become permanently etched into our faces.
THE SOLUTION: Dr. Stegman said the only way to get rid of permanent sleep lines was to SLEEP ON YOUR BACK and minimize facial contact with your pillow. We have a better idea!
The “Hand Test” is easy to do and imitates the pressure your pillow places on your face every night.
Dr. James Fulton published a follow-up article in 1999. He confirmed Dr. Stegman’s findings and warned patients against filling these lines with facial fillers (juvederm, restylane etc) which do not offer long term relief. More importantly Botox (which only works on dynamic or expression lines) is futile on these wrinkles. Facial creases will reappear within hours of treatment because the underlying behavior that created the lines continues to be unchanged…. sleeping on our faces!
Now that you know what sleep wrinkles are, you can adjust the way you sleep to prevent them. The enVy, Anti-Aging pillow was developed to deal with these sleep wrinkles by ALLOWING ergonomically supportive side sleeping while MINIMIZING face-to-pillow contact… brilliant.
