Stress is an unavoidable fact of life most everyone must deal with daily. The stress response is the body’s way of protecting you. In a positive way, stress helps you stay focused, energetic and alert.
In emergency situations, stress can save your life, giving you extra strength to defend yourself. It happens when the body’s defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the fight-or-flight reaction.
The stress response also helps you to meet challenges, such as keeping you sharp during a presentation at work, focusing your concentration when you’re attempting a game changer, or motivating you to work on your thesis instead of going out with friends.
But after a point, stress stops being helpful and starts causing major damage to your health, your mood, your productivity, your relationships and your quality of life.
Stress can adversely affect your whole body, including your skin, hair, and nails. And when the effects of stress show up on your face, the results can be debilitating. When you experience an outbreak of acne, hives, eczema, puffy eyes, dark circles, dull and lifeless skin or a myriad of other skin conditions, you are seeing the toll that stress can take on you. And the first place you see it is on your face.
Stress causes your body to produce cortisol and other hormones, which tells your sebaceous glands to produce more oil. Oily skin is more prone to acne and other skin conditions.
Since stress is an inescapable part of life, you need to know how to manage it. Protect yourself by recognizing the signs and symptoms of stress, especially skin conditions, and take steps to reduce its harmful effects before it’s too late.
- Take care of your skin. Don’t neglect it even if you’re tired or stressed.
- Get regular exercise. Your skin and your entire body will benefit.
- Make time for yourself. Ten minutes can make a difference. Read an article or take a walk, short or long.
- Practice some form of stress management, such as breathing exercises, yoga or meditation.
- Get the sleep you need. For most people, that’s seven to eight hours a night.
- Set limits and don’t try to do everything. It’s okay to say no.
- Get support from a friend or a professional therapist if you need to vent.
If you find that stress has, over time or due to other conditions, left its ill effects on your face and skin and you’re interested in minimally invasive dermatology procedures to diminish the effects, make sure you see a board-certified dermatologist.
There are aesthetic procedures available to you that are designed to deliver the results you want without the pain, worry and downtime of conventional surgeries.
Meantime, breathe deeply, stay calm and avoid the silent killer called stress.
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