So you forgot to sleep on your back. Or maybe you simply cannot sleep on your back. Maybe you can only get a good night’s sleep on your stomach. Maybe you wear a CPAP mask. Whatever the reason, now you have a sheet tattoo design across your not-so-rosy cheeks. The pillow was not your friend and now you look like an ultimate fighter complete with facial scars. And you have a meeting in an hour.
What to do? Wear a full-face mask during the night? Sew tennis balls into the sides of your jammies? Fill the creased canyons with pancake make-up? Too late for those extreme steps? Break out the Botox? Overkill.
Try the following three steps next time you look into the mirror in the morning and see the dreaded skin creases.
1. Slap yourself around. Yep, we have all tried it. And it works. Get some stimulation going. Follow a little cheek slapping session by alternating hot and cold water slaps. Go with cold first. I have found it gets the face muscles taught and frigid. Then when the hot water hits, something about the release of blood into those areas from which it has just retreated gives the crevasses a plumping up.
2. Re-crease the creases. Now go one by one and reverse crease the main offenders. You may not be able to do this for all the little indentations, but there will be a few major linear dents, which will be noticeable across a meeting room. Pinch the skin around them and fold the opposite direction. Do this gently, if you pinch too hard the capillaries underneath may burst. The lines will not go away immediately, but you’ve redistributed the fleshy fluids away from the fold.
3. Apply a deep moisturizer. Moisturizers lubricate the skin and fill in spaces in the skin’s cells. Use a water-based product. These tend to absorb more quickly. A good moisturizer will trap water in the outer layer of your facial skin.
Sometimes I do these steps twice on bad mornings. The lines will not immediately retreat, but I have found that they disappear within several minutes. So use this routine next time you get bed face bad, and you’ll stride with confidence into your day, with a nice glow on your face to boot.