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How To De-Puff Your Face After A Night Of Indulgence In 5 Minutes
We've all been there—the morning after an evening of indulgence, we wake up to red, blotchy, blemished, or puffy skin. "The inflammatory response is due to alcohol and sugar, and the puffiness is from water retention due to super-salty food," said Britta Plug, a holistic esthetician and health coach.
In order to work with that, we need to spend a few minutes in the morning helping lymph to drain, soothing inflammation, and flushing everything out. Plug recommends giving your body love first thing in the morning with a warm lemon and some gentle exercise like walking or yoga to get the lymph moving—the main culprit of a puffy face.
If you don't have your dry brush, Plug swears by a "hot and cold" shower in the morning, which she says can move the lymph. Hot water opens the blood vessels and cold water constricts them. Doing this a few times makes your skin into a pump, she explains, that activates the lymph.
Try this lymph-draining self-massage technique.
Plug recommends this step-by-step ritual because it hits on all the lymph centers from your collarbone up. For each step you'll create 10 circles with the pads of your index and middle finger that move outward.
Plug stresses the importance of technique here—use light circles and keep your fingers glued to the same patch of skin so you move the skin itself in circles. This works with lymph because it's superficial, sits right under the skin, and responds to more gentle touch.
That will be lymph-activating. Lymph nodes stimulate the facial puffiness.
- Starting at the collarbone, make 10 circles right above the bone, near the dip.
- Then move to the side of your neck, underneath your jaw, where lymph glands get swollen when you get a cold, and make 10 small circles here. Note this is under the face, not on the face.
- Next make 10 small outward circles on the outer corner of the jaw—now you're on the face.
- Move your fingers up to in front of your ear, on the face next to your tragus, and make 10 small circles here.
- Next, make 10 small outward circles on your temples.
- If your eyes are puffy too, place the fingertips under the eye facing up and make 10 slow circles outward there, too. You can toggle between directly under your eye and closer to your cheekbones.
- Finish the routine by stroking 10 times down the side of the neck from under the jaw down to the collarbone, doing a gentle sweep 10 times; that will encourage all the lymph and puffiness to drain out of the face.
It can be tempting to reach for (yet another) cup of coffee or caffeinated tea, but in Plug's experience with herself and treating clients, more stimulants will create more inflammation in the body. And it goes without saying, but giving your body a break from all the sugar will help immensely too.
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