Believe it or not, the best kept beauty secret is not a new anti-ageing formula, but a good night’s sleep! It doesn’t take a medical expert to tell you that a night spent tossing and turning can leave you with a dull, dehydrated complexion and dark, puffy bags beneath your eyes. You might be able to disguise these on the odd blue Monday, but the only way to avoid long term wrinkles and sagging is to get some quality beauty sleep. Snoring is a major cause of poor sleep, according to Philippa Logan, owner of SnoreMeds, South Africa’s largest supplier of mandibular devices that help alleviate snoring. They are committed to educating people about taking proactive action to avoid the side effects.
Bad sleep linked to snoring!
The bottom line is that your quality of sleep affects your quality of life. Snoring affects women in two ways – 30 percent are known to snore themselves while many more women have to cope with their partners raising the roof and keeping them awake. When it comes to snorers, many women won’t admit this is a problem simply because there’s a stigma attached to it as it is regarded as unfeminine,” says Philippa Logan.
Logan warns that poor sleep has been linked to serious health problems including increased blood pressure, risk of stroke and heart problems. “It is also likely to have a negative impact on your day-to-day confidence as medical experts have also connected it to depression and anxiety, weight gain, headaches, troubled relationships – and premature aging.” Uninterrupted sleep the answer. As medical experts worldwide explain, sufficient, uninterrupted sleep allows the body to regenerate cells and tissue, including those of the skin. Studies show that cell turnover is eight times faster at night, softening wrinkles. As fresh, new skin cells replace old, dead skin, daily damage from environmental elements such as UV rays and pollution which can cause damage like dehydration, lines, wrinkles and sun spots is reversed. Skin loses more moisture when we don’t sleep enough, according to Logan. “Researchers have demonstrated that poor sleep can disturb the skin-barrier function, resulting in greater moisture loss and a far higher level of inflammatory chemicals. Over time, these take their toll on both the outer epidermal layers and the deeper dermal structures.” (3)
A good night’s rest also helps the body deal with free radicals which accelerate aging. Because the kidneys are more active at night, fluid and toxins are drained away, reducing puffiness under the eyes where there’s less fat and water retention is more apparent. (4)
“Other research has discovered a link between lack of sleep and increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol which may slow collagen production, promoting wrinkles,” says Logan. (5) she also edit that, although most big name beauty houses have conducted research on the effects of sleep on skin to assess how night time skin treatments will work, one of the most conclusive studies released this year was commissioned by Estée Lauder.
“A clinical trial showed conclusively that poor sleepers have increased signs of skin aging and recover more slowly from a variety of environmental stressors. The researchers found poor quality sleepers show increased signs of intrinsic skin aging including fine lines, uneven pigmentation, slackening of skin and reduced elasticity. The recovery of good quality sleepers was 30 percent higher than poor quality sleepers,” she points out. (6)
There are five different stages of sleep which have been divided into light REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and non-REM sleep which is the deepest. Blood pressure drops, breathing lows, muscles relax and blood supply increases and tissue growth and repair occur. According to Logan, conventional snoring is most likely to occur in stages 3 & 4 (deep sleep) Snoring is caused by a partial obstruction of the upper airway behind the tongue. When someone is asleep, the muscles around the upper airway relax, narrowing it. Air rushing through this smaller opening causes the soft tissue to vibrate, producing the sound that we know as snoring.
Stop snoring for uninterrupted sleep
She says that the SnoreMeds mouthpiece has helped up to 85 percent of snorers. It works by gently moving the lower jaw forward, opening the throat, and keeping the airway unobstructed to prevent snoring “vibrations”. Made from hyper-allergenic plastic, it comes in two sizes. “We designed a smaller one to better fit women. It molds to the mouth, allowing the wearer to swallow and breathe normally whilst enjoying a good night’s sleep.” SnoreMeds is available online at www.snoremeds.com
FOOTNOTES Melvin Elson, MD, clinical professor of dermatology at Vanderbilt School of Nursing. Alex Khadavi, M.D., an associate dermatology professor at the University of Southern California, Altemus, Margaret; Rao, Babar; Dhabhar, Firdaus S.; Ding, Wanhong; and Granstein, Richard D. “Stress-Induced Changes in Skin Barrier Function in Healthy Women,” The Society for Investigative Dermatology, Inc. 2001. Book: Simple Skin Beauty by Dr. Ellen Marmur, associate Clinical Professor in both the Department of Dermatology and the Department of Genetics & Genomic Research at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Jyotsna Sahni, MD, a sleep medicine doctor at Canyon Ranch in Tucson. An abstract titled “Effects of Sleep Quality on Skin Aging and Function” carried out by the Skin Study Center at UH Case Medical Center and Associate Professor of Dermatology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine for Estee Lauder and presented at the International Investigative Dermatology Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.