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It sits on your bed calling you to rest. Your soft, fluffy cushion into which you sink every night to sleep your cares away. We’re talking about your pillow—you love it but it may not be loving you back.
No matter how comfortable you think it is, your pillow may be messing with your skin and hair, causing you to wake up in worse shape than when you laid down for your beauty sleep.
We spend about a third of our lives with our faces in our pillows, so it’s important that we do all we can to make sure that whatever we’re sleeping on is actually doing us some good—or at the very least, not exacerbating signs of aging.
Here are five ways your pillow may be boggling your look and what you can make to improve your pillow-face relationship.
When it comes to absorbing bacteria, oils, old makeup, sweat, drool, hair products, and all the other human gunk on you, your pillow is like a sponge. Just imagine it, you deposit these materials on your pillowcase all night long, night after night. Your pillow may look clean but trust us, it’s not.
If you sleep 7-8 hours each night (like you should), you’re exposing your skin to everything on your pillowcase for about 210-240 hours a month. You’d be hard pressed to find anything else that touches your skin that much.
The problem is, even if you start with a clean pillowcase, after a night or two, you’re lying down on old dirt and microorganisms. As these materials come into contact with your face again, they clog pores and encourage inflammation, increasing your chances of waking up with breakouts, or at least carrying around the bacteria that might cause one later.
To help reduce this risk:
If you’re sleeping on a dirty pillowcase, you may end up seeing breakouts in more places that just your face. Your pillowcase can also cause issues for the skin on your back and shoulders as well. The dirt and oil accumulated from your dirty pillowcase can transfer on the skin closest to where the fabric is, which if you’re a restless sleeper can be around your neck, shoulders, back,and even arms. So, all those beauty products you use to keep your skin flawless won’t be able to work their magic because your dirty pillowcase is overpowering them with its nasty grime.
To be blunt, your pillow could be making you look older.
Some recent studies have found a link between sleeping on your side or stomach and developing wrinkles.
In June 2016, Oxford University reported that when people sleep on their sides or their stomachs, the forces applied to the face on the pillow can result in the development of “sleep wrinkles” over time. In other words, gravity smashes your face into the pillow for hours each night. Over time, this may result in the appearance of wrinkles or “creases.”
An earlier 2012 study from the Journal of Cosmetic and Laser Therapy found similar results, with mechanical forces during sleep creating crow’s feet, lines around the mouth, flatting of the forehead, and nasolabial folds.
The problem gets worse as we age for a couple reasons. First, we don’t shift positions during sleep as much as we get older, which means that we have more pressure on a certain part of the face for longer periods of time. Second, as skin ages, it is less able to resist these forces because of decreased elasticity and skin “thinning.”
To try to limit this potential risk:
Do you find that when you wake up your pillowcase is covered in loose strands? If so, your hair might be breaking throughout the night and your pillowcase might be the one to blame. A rough cotton pillowcase not only causes lines and wrinkles, but it can cause hair breakage, leaving your locks damaged and thin. Sounds awful, right? You want that like you want a crease on your forehead. But you can do something about it. Use that same satin pillowcase you bought that helps prevent wrinkles to help prevent hair damage. Your hair will be able to move more easily and won’t break off from any rough fabric.
A regular cotton pillowcase can actually suck up the moisture in your skin and in return leave your skin incredibly dry when you wake up. Overtime, this annoying dryness routine can make your skin age faster by causing more lines and wrinkles. Avoid having this happen to your skin by trying a silk pillowcase. This type of fabric has amino acids that are similar to those found in a really solid moisturizer, so it will help keep your skin soft throughout the night. This way, you’ll wake up with gorgeous, flawless skin that looks youthful.
When do you do your nighttime skin care routine?
Do you wash, tone, apply your serum and moisturizer and then immediately go to bed? If so, you may be wasting your money.
Applying your skin care products and then going directly to bed means that some of those products may still be on the surface of your skin. You lay down on that comfy pillow and…do you hear that quiet sucking sound? That’s your pillow absorbing the products you so carefully applied.
What can you do? Try these tips:
Are you waking up with red, itchy, irritated skin? It’s time to take a second look at your pillow, pillowcase, and detergent.
Remember that a dirty pillowcase is re-depositing dirt, oil, germs, makeup, hair products, and more onto your skin, which could be the cause of temporary irritation but it could also be the materials in your bedding.
To reduce risk of redness and inflammation in the morning:
If you’re waking up with bed head and it’s just not your style, it could be your pillow and/or pillowcase.
An average pillowcase will grab onto your hair strands and hold tight, even as you’re moving around during sleep. This results in pulling and pressing that results in those unflattering locks the next morning and also encourages breakage and split ends. These types of pillowcases also suck up natural hair oils, resulting in drier, frizzier locks.
Here’s what you can do: