A new way to fight sleep lines

You know those infomercial-type websites?

You know the ones I mean: they always have this strange, “internet-circa-2002” look about them, with long sales copy, featuring increasingly hysterical testimonials from people who’ve had their lives changes by a face cream, or some dodgy-looking invention that can be yours for four low monthly payments of just $39.99, but only if you ACT NOW, GO GO GO! The ones you look at and smirk, and think, “Who in their right mind would actually buy something from one of these websites, without worrying they were just going to take their money, and then never actually send them the product? WHO?”

*sheepishly raises hand*

Guys, I bought a ‘SYLA’ from one of those websites. And then I spent an entire week worrying that they were just going to take my money, and not send me the product, and if what if it doesn’t work anyway, and I wonder if I should just contact Paypal NOW and ask them to do a chargeback, or if I should wait until I’m absolutely SURE I’ve been robbed blind?

And then the product turned up, and it was exactly as they’d described it, and I felt really stupid, and actually quite guilty, for having judged the poor SYLA-makers so harshly.

Still: I shop from the websites you’ve never heard from so you don’t have to, right? And what the hell is a SYLA, anyway? Gather round, and I’ll tell you aaaallll about it.

First things first: THIS is a SYLA:

Yeah, you’re none the wiser, really, are you?

So, a Syla is a basically a little satin headband things that you wear to bed at night, to stop your forehead creasing on your pillow, and giving you those pesky sleep lines, that don’t actually go away, once you reach A Certain Age. Now, if you’re a regular reader, you’re probably sick to death of hearing me bang on about this (So why’d you open this post, then? Huh? HUH?), but I have been plagued by these sleep lines for a few years now, and I’ve tried absolutely everything I can think of to prevent them. There’s a whole list of things I’ve tried here, in fact.

Most recently, I’ve been using a silk pillowcase to try to prevent sleep lines. A few weeks ago, though, the silk pillowcase ripped while I was ironing it – which wasn’t really a surprise, to be honest, given that it had been washed and used approximately a kazillionty-one times by that point, and should probably have been replaced MONTHS ago. It had also somewhat lost its effectiveness, though: I’m not sure if that’s a natural consequence of all of the washing, or if I’d just managed to find a new and more effective way of scrunching my face into my pillow, but I’d started waking up with that “Harry Potter” line on my forehead again, and I was NOT happy about it.

When the pillowcase gave up the ghost, I went back to using my Save My Face pillow, but it, too, was less effective than it used to be – mostly because I was just so sick of having to carefully balance my head on a croissant every night, that I felt like I hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in YEARS. “There HAS to be another solution!” I told myself: so I hit up Google, and there it was – the SYLA.

Now, this product is something I’ve always thought should be on the market. In fact, I kinda wish I’d thought to trademark it myself, to be honest. The basic principle, you see, is really simple: you place it around your head before you go to sleep, and the Syla holds the skin in place, not allowing it to crease against the pillow when you like down. So you wake up with a smooth forehead, and the world just generally feels like a far better place.

This all made perfect sense to me, so I Googled some more, and when I realised there didn’t seem to be a UK distributor for the thing, I thought, “What the hell! I WILL pay the $15.99 shipping fee to have a small satin headband sent across the ocean to smooth my troubled brow! Sign me up!”

So I ordered it. And yeah, you’re probably thinking that was pretty stupid of me, because it’s not like it was particularly cheap ($39.99), and you might even be thinking you could make one at home. If you could, good for you: I, however, couldn’t, and here’s the thing:

The SYLA was worth every penny.

And no, this is not a sponsored post: I really did spend $55 of my own money on this thing, and JE NE REGRETTE REIN. Because it works. It just… WORKS. Better than the silk pillowcase, better than the Save My Face pillow, WAY better than the goddamn Frownies, which only ever moved the sleep line to a different part of my face. And, OK, I look a bit like a really crappy Superhero when I wear it:

(I took these photos from Snapchat, so apologies for the quality: it just didn’t seem worth the hassle of getting the studio lights and tripod out to take a photo of myself with a bandage on my head, somehow. And yes, there’s totally a filter on that first one: let me have at least SOME dignity here…)

I don’t really care, though, because finally – FINALLY – I can go to sleep without having to try to stay on my back for as long as possible, or keep my head carefully balanced in a certain way, to avoid those stupid sleep lines. I wish I’d bought two now, to be honest.

So, yeah, so far I’m impressed. When I took the SYLA out of the box and tried it on, I was initially worried it was going to be too loose to do any good. After wearing it around the house for 20 minutes or so, though, I realised it was actually tighter than I’d thought (not tight enough to be uncomfortable, but tight enough to let you know it’s there). The one issue I DO have is that, because it’s a slippery, satin material, and I have equally slippery hair, it has a tendency to start sliding off my head, so if I’m particularly restless, I might have to readjust it. I think it would work better if the back of the headband was a little “grippier”, for want of a better word, but, with that said, I’ve been wearing it every night since it arrived, and not once have I woken up with sleep lines, so that’s good enough for me.

Now, I suspect some of you are wondering why I can’t just wear a regular headband around my forehead at night, and that’s a good question. I haven’t actually tried it, but I think all of the headbands I have would be too loose/narrow to work properly, and would also keep catching on my pillow, and being pulled off. This covers the entire forehead, glides across the pillow, and, most importantly, WORKS, which is why I’m already worrying about what I’ll do if they ever stop making them. If you have a better solution, though, do tell…

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