How Stress Affects Skin Health & Here’s How to Combat It

Stress can significantly impact your skin and cause acne, dermatitis, and other skin disorders. Stress can also cause you to lose sleep, which has a lot of adverse effects on the body and skin. This article will talk about how stress affects your skin and what you can do about it.

How Stress Affects Skin Health

The trouble is, many things in life can stress us out, from relationship troubles to traffic jams. And stress can have a significant impact on the way our bodies function, including our skin. If you’re struggling with anxiety in your life, don’t let that impact your health too. Here’s how stress affects skin health.

Tightness of Skin: When you are stressed out, your body releases adrenaline, epinephrine, and cortisol, making muscles tense. These chemicals are also responsible for increased heart rate and blood pressure. When the muscles in your face, neck, and shoulders get tense from stress, they create wrinkles on your face. People who are stressed tend to frown more often than relaxed people, so this causes wrinkles around the forehead, between eyebrows, around mouth corners or sides of the nose, and at the edges of lips if they pull them down when they frown.

Large Pores: Stress also contributes to enlarged pores, appearing more prominent than usual. It is not true that only those with oily skin have enlarged pores; even those with dry or sensitive skin have enlarged pores due to stress and tension in their facial muscles. If you have dry or sensitive skin, enlarged pores can make it difficult for your skin to retain moisture and make it cracked or flaky.

Cause Acne Flare-Ups: Stress can cause acne flare-ups because it increases the amount of oil in your body, and this extra oil mixes with dead skin cells and clogs your pores. Acne presents as pimples, blackheads, or cysts on the face, back, or chest. They often have red bumps around them and can be painful and embarrassing.

Hair loss: People undergoing stress often suffer from hair loss and thinning hair, which can be attributed to hormones like testosterone being converted into estrogen by the adrenal glands during high stress. Once estrogen has taken over, it begins to affect other parts of the body, including the hair follicles. Hair thinning can also be attributed to other factors, such as poor diet or certain medications, so it’s best to check with a doctor if you’re concerned about it.

Anxiety Disorders: In addition to these physical symptoms, stress can also cause anxiety disorders, which often look like chronic depression or anxiety attacks. Acne is one symptom that indicates an anxiety disorder where the sufferer may not know that they have a problem.

Some Tips To Relieve Stress: You must find a healthy outlet for stress. You may find that exercise helps relieve tension in your body, allowing your mind to focus on other things besides being stressed out about something. It’s also vital that you not take on too much responsibility and avoid stressful situations whenever possible.

Some Home Tips to Ease the Stress

• Exercise regularly: Exercise regularly. Exercise is known for its ability to relieve stress and improve moods, but it can also produce an attractive flush on your cheeks that will make you feel better about yourself.

• Eat a Healthy, Balanced Diet: You know what they say about an apple a day keeping the doctor away? It’s also true for your skin. Eating fruits and vegetables leads to a more youthful appearance.

• Get Enough Sleep: We all know the importance of getting enough sleep, but that doesn’t make it any easier to get our recommended seven to nine hours a night. Establishing a regular sleep schedule will help you not only feel better but also look better too.

• Take Time for Yourself:  Leave five minutes at the end of your workday to relax and unwind, or else you’ll use alcohol or cigarettes as a way to deal with stress.

Bottom Line: Stress is hard on the mind and the body, and skin health is not immune to its side effects. Now that you know how stress affects skin health, it’s up to you to fight back by looking after yourself.