Better skin is just a sleep away
October 9, 2009
The You Docs
You can look better with a good night's rest, since Z's help stimulate a growth hormone that boosts production of collagen and elastin to keep your skin taut. But don't let sleep do all the work – try these tricks:
Sleep face up and let gravity exert a light stretching effect on your skin. With your face pressed to the pillow, you'll look puffier in the morning and develop sleep lines.
Wrap your pillow. Allergy to dust mites (really, dust mite poop) is common, as are allergies to feathers and laundry soap. These cause repeated nighttime eyelid swelling. Covering your pillow with a 1-micron pillowcase (the fabric's pores are one-thousandth of a millimetre). This should decrease the allergies and the puffy look.
Let your skin breathe to get rid of toxins from the sebaceous glands. It can't do that covered by makeup.
Skip the nightcap. Alcohol dehydrates your skin and increases the leakiness of capillaries, so more water moves from your bloodstream into your soft tissue. With the horizontal position during sleep, the result is facial puffiness, stretched skin, and faster wrinkle formation.
Bite back at cancer: Juicier than the latest gossip, apples bump up colon-protective compounds and clamp down on those that cause cancer, thanks to their fibre and pectin. In the lab, apple pectin increased levels of butyrate, a fatty acid that does this colon-health double duty.
Don't peel your apples; if you pitch the skin, you're ditching compounds called triterpenoids, which have strong potential against colon cancer and breast and liver cancers, too. The peels also contain quercetin, a compound that may bolster your immune system (it may even help stave off the flu when you're under stress), and that can help defend your body against cardiovascular disease and even Alzheimer's.
ENERGY BOOSTERS: Are your energy stores secretly zapped? To run on sustainable energy, ask yourself: When do you first feel tired during the day?
A) When I wake up, even after sleeping a full eight hours every night for a week.
B) Morning or mid-afternoon.
C) Whenever I deal with my boss.
D) After working 12 hours or more.
Results: If you answered anything other than D), it could be a sign that your energy systems are out of whack, causing you to feel tired when you should feel energized.
First, make sure you're doing the basics for energy: Maintain good sleep habits, keep up your daily walks and don't fill up on saturated fat and sugar. Still zapped? Consider these energy boosters:
DHA: This is the active form of good omega-3 fats, and it helps keep the nerves firing to your muscles. Get it from either fish oil (2 grams daily) or a DHA supplement (600 milligrams daily).
Ribose: This is a sugar your body makes naturally, and it helps build the energy blocks of your body. You can get extra in supplement form, and if your doctor gives you the green light, you could try 500 milligrams three times a day for a week, then 5 grams three times a day for three weeks to see its effect.
NATURE'S BEST PAINKILLER: People who practise Zen meditation have been shown to be far less sensitive to pain, and better at coping with it. The goal is to identify how emotions arise and influence you. In the Zen study, when a "heat source" was applied to volunteers' calves, meditators simply noticed what they were feeling and observed it without judging it. They tolerated higher temps and did not find the pain as unpleasant or as intense as non-meditators.
Meditation may get you past pain by helping you bypass a blame-and-stress cycle in your brain. This helps decrease stress hormones and increase pain-squelching ones.
Simply close your eyes and help clear your mind by silently repeating one word. When your mind wanders, refocus on the word.
The You Docs, Mike Roizen and Mehmet Oz, are authors of the best-selling YOU: On a Diet. Send questions to the doctors on their website, realage.com.
Toronto Star
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