April is Stress Awareness Month! This is the perfect time to reduce or eliminate sources of stress from your life and make a plan to actively manage your stress.
Why is a dermatologist talking about stress? Because stress doesn’t just affect mental and emotional health, it affects physical health, too, and can show up in the skin. Here’s how stress can negatively affect your skin.
Stress Can Cause Flare-Ups
The body’s stress response triggers an increase in the hormone cortisol, which can lead to your stress showing in your skin. The stress response can lead to flare-ups of many skin conditions, including acne, eczema, rosacea, and psoriasis.
Stress Can Cause Rashes and Hives
The stress response is also believed to be responsible for causing rashes and hives, or making them worse, though the exact pathway isn’t clear. Hives or a rash may emerge as a result of stress and remain for several hours, days, or even weeks.
Stress Can Cause Wrinkles
While the stress response isn’t directly related to wrinkles, stress itself can lead to repeated facial expressions like furrowed brows, pursed lips, or frowning, which can become etched in the face over time in the form of fine lines and wrinkles.
Stress and Bad Habits
Many people respond to stress by eating poorly, skipping exercise, smoking, drinking, and indulging in other unhealthy habits that are bad for the skin. Many people also suffer from stress-related insomnia, which gives the skin less time to rejuvenate and repair itself during the night and leads to a dull complexion and puffy, dark circles under the eyes.
Manage Stress to Save Your Skin
It’s impossible to eliminate all sources of stress from your life, so the next best thing is to learn to manage it proactively. This Stress Awareness Month, take some extra time to practice self-care by focusing on exercising regularly, maintaining good nutrition, getting ample sleep, and engaging in stress-reduction practices like meditation, visualization, or journaling. You’ll not only feel the effects of reduced stress in your life, you’ll see it in your healthy, radiant skin.
If you are having skin issues due to stress or other factors, make an appointment with PotozkinMD Skincare Center. Your best self could be one click or call away!