The festive season is for sure in full swing and as many indulge in alcoholic beverages and salty food, all takes its toll on your skin. Keeping hydrated is key to avoid dry, puffy and spotty skin.

Excess salt allows our bodies to retain water which can result in bloating and puffy faces. Keep drinking water and you can avoid these symptoms. All the indulgences also makes skin dull, dry and this may result in breakouts. Quick fixes are superficial chemical peels and microdermabrasion treatments but it helps to drink water with these treatments. They are quick to rejuvenate skin allowing your skin still to sparkle throughout the festive season.

There are also many transformation creams availble to ensure deep intense moisture lock and gentle exfoliators to boost the skins metabolism to rejuvenate it. The Jan Marini range is a festive favourite and a luxurious treat.

Dazzle your way through this festive period!

Growing old gracefully seems to be a thing of the past, especially if you are Madonna.  According to a celebrity magazine last week, Madonna has actually had so much work done that now, rather than looking younger it has started to have the reverse effect and is making her look her age, which is 53 in case you wondered!

As we age it is natural for us to start losing volume in our face, especially where the cheeks are concerned. Rather than having too much cosmetic work done, it is advisable to go with the ‘less is more’ approach using minimally invasive cosmetic procedures rather than full on surgery.

Dermal Fillers such as Juvéderm® are brilliant for restoring volume and plumpness to areas such as the cheeks and lips.  If it is skin tightening that you require you should opt for the latest non invasive skin tightening treatment which is called the CPT Thermage system and successfully manages to help tighten your skin in a single treatment.

A feeling that only a snorer can associate with and its that feeling of fear when you nod off on the tube, train or plane knowing that you’ve probably woken yourself up snoring! There’s that moment when your eye focus on the few nearest around you and your eyes ask the question – was I snoring? There are smirks around you and you get that all to familiar feeling in the pit of your stomach as you’ve been faced again with yet another embarrassing snoring moment.

You’d be right in thinking that nowadays the embarrassment of snoring is plastered everywhere, the mobile devices now have made t easier to record, post to youtube and create a space where millions are sharing the most embarrassing snoring moments.

For those who snigger, little do they know how humiliating is must be for the snorer and more importantly how snoring maybe affecting their lives.

Snoring can have a distressing effect on relationships and can cause a number of problems for sufferers as a result of disturbed sleep. Sufferers can often feel tired during the day and find it difficult to concentrate.

There are various over he counter devices to stop snoring but sufferers have said that these don’t always give full benefits. Non surgical advice to stop snoring s readily available and will include avoiding spicy food, to restrict alcohol late at night and to lose weight which is common for a snorer.

For many though they want to seek a cure for snoring. There are a few treatment options to stop snoring. These include Laser Assisted Uvulopalatoplasty, Unblocking the nose, and Bipolar Radiofrequency Thermotherapy. All are minimally-invasive treatments performed under local anaesthetic and are walk-in walk-out procedures.

There are treatments out there to help improve your lifestyle and reduce the embarrassment.

Q: Does smoking effect snoring?

Dear Sir, smoke can cause your airways to become inflamed, which increases the narrowing of the airways when you smoke. An important factor for improving or curing snoring is a person’s willingness to make important lifestyle changes, such as losing weight (if they are overweight) or quitting smoking (if they smoke). If the self-help measures above don’t seem to work, it’s worth talking to your GP. He or she will check for any underlying health problem and they may refer you to an ENT specialist.

We would also add that snoring is different from person to person. If smoking is the cause of your snoring then it may not be the case for someone else. Getting to the route of why you snore maybe a bit of a trial and error process before you seek help. Smoking, alcohol and spicy food can contribute to snoring and are easy lifestyle changes to make to see if any of these affect you.

Celebrities seem to be the talk of the town at the moment but for many of them, it’s for the wrong reasons, just take Abbey Crouch for instance.  She was all over the papers this week with people speculating on whether she has had her lips enhanced.

Everybody wants to look their best and having minimally invasive procedures such as Botox and Juvéderm® fillers is an accessible and effective way to help erase moderate lines around the lips, corners of the eyes and lines close to the surface of the skin. Best of all these procedures can be done in your lunch break and you can go straight back to work afterwards

It is important to highlight that when having any procedure you should only visit a reputable cosmetic doctor or nurse or who will take into account how you currently look and of course, how you want to look. Remember with procedures such as these it is sometimes better to have the ‘less is more’ ethos and this certainly applies at The Private Clinic of Harley Street. You can always go back for more if you feel the result isn’t as plump as you would like. The last thing you’d want is too much of a product leaving you with the results not desired. Particularly for people who have not had any treatment in the past and are anxious about the final results.

Yes alcohol can definitely cause snoring. Alcohol slows the brain’s responses, causing the muscles to relax even more than during a normal night’s sleep. The added relaxation of the musculature causes the oropharynx to collapse causing snoring. Furthermore alcohol may induce obstructive sleep apnoea (where breathing stops for short periods during sleep) in individuals who are otherwise just snorers. Additionally alcohol causes nasal airway irritation and congestion that increases the airway resistance when breathing.

However if you are not heavily overweight and snore at all time, regardless of your alcohol consumption, your snoring could be caused by a stuffy nose, a blocked nose or an enlarged uvola, which can be treated with radiofrequency or laser treatments.

There are many lifestyle influencers that can cause snoring, like alcohol consumption, and it is important to evaluate them all to see if any help your situation. Late night drinking may well be an easy lifestyle change to make, to stop your snoring.

It’s the bane of many a light sleeper. The unrelenting sound of someone clearly enjoying a deep slumber and snoring their head off, in the process, denying others the same luxury.

In a poll of 3,000 adults 54% said they were kept awake by their loved one’s snoring.

Snoring is such a problem that one hotel chain has employed people to do ‘Snore patrols’ and introduced ‘snore absorption’ rooms to combat noisy sleepers. Those who snore too loudly will get a knock on the door from the monitors who will be listening out for offensive noises.

This however isn’t an option at home. Snoring is a problem that affects four out of 10 adults in the UK and it can have devastating effects on relationships due to sleep deprivation.

But there are some lifestyle changes that you can do to reduce your chances of snoring:

- Losing weight: if you have a collar size of 16½ inches or greater, you may not have the muscle tone needed to keep the airway open sufficiently at night to allow normal breathing.

- Sleeping position: while sleeping on your back, your tongue, your chin and any excess fatty tissue under your chin may relax back and squash your airway. Sleeping on your side could prevent this.

- Alcohol: alcohol slows the brain’s responses, causing the muscles to relax even more than during a normal night’s sleep. Additionally alcohol causes nasal airway irritation and congestion that increases the airway resistance when breathing.

However if you are not heavily overweight and snore at all time, regardless of your alcohol consumption, your snoring could be caused by a stuffy nose, a blocked nose or an enlarged uvola, for which treatments like Laser Assisted Uvulopalatoplasty (LAUP) and Radiofrequency could help.

Before your partner introduces a snoring patrol, talk to your doctor to see what you can do to reduce your snoring. They will thank you for that!

Q: If I lose weight will I stop snoring?

Dear Sir, not everybody who snores is overweight, however being overweight is one of the possible causes of snoring, particularly if you have a large amount of fat around your neck. People with a neck circumference (the distance around the neck) of more than 43cm (16 and 1/2 inches) usually snore. An important factor for improving or curing snoring is a person’s willingness to make important lifestyle changes, such as losing weight (if they are overweight).

Your lifestyle has many cobntributing factors to why one may snore, so if you are not overweight, there could be other reasons why you snore.