The Integral Mind-Skin Connection
Your body responds to changes in your psychological state; conditions like stress, depression, and anxiety can cause new skin issues to develop or existing skin issues to flare up. When you feel stressed, your sympathetic nervous system releases 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. When your body perceives a threat, the immune system sends out a response to handle it – that response is inflammation. Usually, inflammation helps protect and heal our bodies from microbes and wounds, but a body under stress causes the immune system to overreact and send out an inflammatory response.
In today’s blog we will focus on the different ways stress can affect your skin and the rest of your body.
Acne
When you feel stressed, your body produces more of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol causes a part of your brain known as the hypothalamus to produce a hormone called corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH). CRH is thought to stimulate oil release from sebaceous glands around your hair follicles. Excessive oil production by these glands can clog your pores and lead to acne.
Bags Under Your Eyes
When you feel stressed, your body produces more of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol causes a part of your brain known as the hypothalamus to produce a hormone called corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH). CRH is thought to stimulate oil release from sebaceous glands around your hair follicles. Excessive oil production by these glands can clog your pores and lead to acne.
Rashes
Stress has the potential to weaken your immune system. A weakened immune system can lead to an imbalance of bacteria in your gut and skin known as dysbiosis. When this imbalance occurs on your skin, it can lead to redness or a rash.
Wrinkles
Stress causes changes to the proteins in your skin and reduces its elasticity. This loss of elasticity can contribute to wrinkle formation.
Stress may also lead to repeated furrowing of your brow that may also contribute to the formation of wrinkles.
Greying & Eventual Hair Loss
Common wisdom says stress can make your hair go gray. However, it’s only recently that scientists have figured out why. Cells called melanocytes produce a pigment called melanin that gives your hair its color.
Dry skin
The stratum corneum is the outer layer of your skin. It contains protein and lipids that play a critical role in keeping your skin cells hydrated. It also acts as a barrier that protects the skin underneath. When your stratum corneum isn’t working the way it should, your skin can become dry and itchy.
Ways to Ease The Effects Of Stress on Your Skin
You probably can’t avoid stress completely, but you can try ways to handle it better. Try these approaches:
- Get regular exercise. It's good for your skin and the rest of your body.
- Take time for yourself to do something you enjoy, even if you only have 10 minutes. Take a bath or read a book.
- Take a walk around the block.
- Practice stress management techniques, such as breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, or visual imagery.
- Get enough sleep. Seven to 8 hours each night is ideal.
- Say no. It's OK to set limits and boundaries to lower your stress.
- Talk to someone. Seek support from a friend or a professional therapist.
How To Counteract Your pre-existing Skin Complications?
Our next suggestion is for patients who already see the impact stress has over their skin. If this sounds like you, know that we provide solutions to counteract even your most frustrating skin care problems.
We recommend the following most common and effective treatment options for producing these results include:
- Facial cleansers
- Prescription acne medication
- Acne extraction
- Corticosteroid injection
- Chemical peels
- Micro-needling
- Microdermabrasion
- Laser skin resurfacing
Stress Coping Mechanisms
Whether it’s meditation or microneedling, turning off the stress faucet and undoing the damage that’s been done are steps one and two if getting our bodies back on track.
The most important thing is to start with the intention to care for yourself. Once you have made that intention, assign a specific amount of time each day to taking care of yourself. If you only have a few seconds, take a deep breath and smile. If you only have 10 minutes, walk around and stretch. With half an hour, you can take time to do things you like, listen to your favorite songs, have a conversation with a loved one, or just give yourself time to relax.
Work from the bottom up to rebalance your brain and nervous system. Calm your body, shift to a positive emotion like gratitude, and then focus on a simple, practical adjustment that will have maximum benefit, like the ‘Breathe, Feel and Focus’ or ‘BFF’ technique. If chronic stress is too hard to handle alone, she recommends incorporating electrotherapy. It uses a gentle electrical current to stimulate specific groups of nerve cells in the brain. This nudges the nervous system into a calmer state.
We hope this provides you with an avid view as to how stress can only effect your appearance but your entire body metabolism.
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