What Happens to Your Skin When You're Under Stress
We know that good skin care can help us look younger and healthier, but how does stress affect our skin? Stress is something almost everyone experiences at some point and while you may think that stress is all in your head, it can also affect your entire body including your skin health.
You may be surprised to learn how stress affects your skin. In fact, when you learn about the changes your body goes through when you’re stressed, you can address those changes to keep your skin looking its best. Here’s a few things that happen to your skin when you’re under stress.
The Impact of Stress on Your Skin
Chronic stress has a major impact on our bodies, including our skin; when we have too much stress in our lives (which can be from a variety of sources), skin cells don’t function properly and this can be harmful to our skin health. Conditions like stress, anxiety, or depression can cause new skin issues to develop or existing skin issues to flare up. Your sympathetic nervous system reacts when you're under stress by releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline into your body. Cortisol causes increased oil production in your skin glands, which can lead to clogged pores and acne breakouts. Chronic stress leads to constant increased levels of these hormones and can have a negative effect on your skin health. Additionally, psychological conditions cause increased internal inflammation and a body under stress causes the immune system to overreact and send out an inflammatory response.
How Stress Affects Your Skin Health
There are many ways stress can affect your skin:
- Cortisol, the stress hormone, causes an overproduction of sebum (oil) which can cause oily skin and acne breakouts.
- Stress impacts your immune system, can cause your skin got be more reactive and sensitive to rashes, hives and redness.
- Inflammatory skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, and rosacea may worsen when you're stressed, causing flare-ups. People with chronic stress find it more difficult to keep these conditions in check and rely on quality skin care for help.
- While stress causes you to feel nervous or anxious, it can also cause you to scratch at your skin until it becomes overly sensitive.
Tips to Help Keep Your Skin Stress Free
Try these at-home steps to ease the effects of stress on your skin.
- Maintaining a good skin care routine every day and using medical grade skin care may help calm inflamed skin. It will help keep oily skin under control and help prevent acne flare ups.
- Be sure and stick to your daily skin care routine, even if you are stressed, sad, tired, and don't want to cleanse your face before bed. Neglect could worsen your skin health in the long run, erasing your previous anti-aging routines.
- Exercise regularly. Exercise releases feel-good hormones that will improve your energy, mood, and outlook.
- Eat healthy foods and maintain a balanced diet with whole foods and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Inflammation inside your body can be aggravated by eating processed and sugar-laden foods.
- Sleep! Heal your body with rest while improving your mood, energy levels, and cognition. Be sure and give your body time to heal and wind down with plenty of rest.
- Take time for you. Find time to engage in things that make you happy. A relaxing, re-energizing activity – reading a book, a warm bath or massage, listening to music, meditating, practicing yoga, deep breathing exercises, or axe-throwing! Whatever helps you manage chronic stress and maintain your skin health.
When to Seek Help
Most importantly, if stress is having a negative impact on your health and well being, we encourage you to talk to someone. Confide in a family member, trusted friend, spiritual counselor, or therapist. You will be able to handle the stress even better by just knowing you have someone by your side. This can help you feel stronger in your capability to handle stress.
If your skin health is an issue, we also encourage you to seek help from the professionals at Caddell's Laser Clinic. Our master estheticians can identify the underlying causes of your skin issues and help create an effective treatment plan.
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