Early in the morning you’re greeted with chores that you have to finish all on your own. At noon, your boss got worked up after you did a minor mistake. Even till you come home, your kids are quarreling, fighting over toys. Late at night, you still have to think about a lot of things. How stressful is life, if we think more about it.
Almost every person, no matter what their jobs is, where they live, how much money do they have, they are still very prone to stress.
The thing is, stress isn’t only able to disturb your mind state, it can also affect your overall health. No matter how weird it might seems, most diseases in the world is actually started with stress. Your skin is no exceptions.
This article will gives you how can stress affect your skin, including the definition of stress, and things that triggers it.
The Definition of Stress
In psychology world, stress is defined as psychological pressure thatone dealing with, in this case, including how the body response. Stress isn’t just that one pressure in your mind, but it’s actually involving your metabolism, your whole body.
Whenever someone’s under stress, the body will also response to it as an attack. Here, a lot of hormones are being affected, such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones are those that give us the ‘fire’ to move, to response, to do something about the situation. Remember those pounding heart, overflowing sweats that you feel when you’re being chased by a bulldog? That’s your body trying to response to the pressure or attack.
So, actually stress isn’t always something negative. It’s good to safe us from that dangerous situations such as being chased by wild animals. But the thing is, long-term stress can be a bad influence for our health. Beside, it can also give us that inability to think straight.
You might also read : 15 Tips On Stress Relievers 100% Works!
Things that can Cause Stress
Everything happens for a reason, so does the stress you’re dealing with. In life, there are various reasons and situations that possibly triggers us, such as :
- Workplace stress
Not being able to adapt with the colleagues, having to do too much jobs with a tight deadline, ignorant boss, working for too long, or even having to give some speech in front of colleagues can triggers stress.
- Social pressure
We’re social creature that needs to be accepted, need to interact, building a relationship with others. When the social environment can’t accept you, bullied you, outcast you, or belittling you, there is a big chance for stress to peek in.
- Life matters
Losing the loved ones, dealing with divorce, going through a bankrupt, those are just few life changes that can give you a hard times.
Others
- Financial problems
- Health conditions
- Pregnancy
That changes in hormone can cause a pregnant women to stress out. When that stress occurs, you can try these 25 Effective Home Remedies for Stress During Pregnancy.
Here are few ways your stress affecting your skin health :
- Acne
One of skin problems that has become most people’s enemy is acne, this skin problems really annoyed a lot of people whenever it’s occurred, especially if you have oily skin types. The cortisol hormones your body released under stress is also in charge of increasing skin’s oil production. When this happens, your skin become more prone to pimples, which is something you wouldn’t want.Here are few Effective Ways on How to Eliminate Acne with Honey that you can try.
2. Eczema
Stress can cause this itchy rashes that will be seen as scaly patches on someone’s skin. Usually, there will also be a small bump that contains fluid in some cases.
3. Hives
Hives is a swollen bumps on the skin that appear as a sign of allergies or any other reasons. When someone get this hives, they’ll feel itchy, or even burn. Other than allergens, stress can also be one of the reason why hives appears on the body, whether it’s in the face, lips, ears, or back.
When you’re stressing out too much, your body’s immune starts to weakened. It will eventually send histamine to the body to fight the attack, stress. Thus, the one that’s being affected is not the stress, but your body instead.When you’re stress and your immune system get weakened, your body will also become less resistant to irritants, such as cold, soap, sunlight, etc.
4. Vitiligo
What we might be unaware is, that our stress can actually triggers vitiligo, although it’s not the only cause underlying. Beside sunburn, insect bites, and exposure to chemicals, stress can also cause this auto-immune disease. Vitiligo itself is a conditions where the skin has lost melanin due to destroyed melanocytes, resulting in a huge patch with a different color from natural skin color. This is a condition when someone’s immune system attacks themselves, or specifically, the pigment cells that’s in charge of producing melanin.
5. Rosacea
As this skin redness can be triggered by spicy foods, alcohol, stress can also cause abnormal chemical reactions in the skin, resulting in rosacea. Rosacea itself mostly appears on the face, all the way through the nose, chin, or cheeks area. People who have rosacea will show some symptoms such as blushing, facial redness that won’t go away quickle, visible blood vessels, even bumps and pimples.
6. Psoriasis
This is a skin condition where flake, inflammation, patches appears. This area will turn white or pink as it also cause itchy feeling. Psoriasis often occurs on the scalp, knees, and elbows. This skin condition is also a result of abnormal immune system signals. In this case, overactive immune system might occurs out of stress.
7. Unpleasant body odor
When someone’s under stress, they’ll probably end up producing excessive sweats. This can cause humidity in the armpits area, or in other words, becoming a very comfortable habitat for bacteria. At last this situations can cause an unpleasant body odor that no one would even want.
Read also : How to Use White Vinegar for Underarm Odor
8. Eye bags
Fluid retention on the undereye area can leave your eyes looking puffy and unattractive. Lacking of sleep is the one that’s responsible for the fluid retention. When someone’s under stress, usually they’ll find it hard to fall a sleep or having good quality sleep. You might try these 25 Ways How to Get Rid of Sleep Marks Under Eyes to deal with your eye puffiness.
9. Oily skin
When you’re stressed, you’ll produce more cortisol hormone, which actually cause oily skin. When someone’s skin become oily, they’ll become more prone to a lot of skin problems such as acne.
10. Skin dryness
Stress can decrease skin’s ability to hold on water. Once our skin’s lacking of water, it will also lost moisture. It can get worse if you’re stress and don’t get enough water, dehydration that’s coming through will dries up your skin even more.
Other Ways (11-17)
Here are few other ways your stress is damaging your skin :
- Face lines : Realize it or not, stress can cause your muscle to tense a lot and eventually lead to wrinkle.
- Spots : Increase of oil productions can lead to clogging pores, then eventually leave spots on your skin.
- Pimple pop : Stress isn’t only capable of causing pimples to appear, but can also worsen it. When someone’s stress, they’ll feel the strong desire to pop on their pimples, which is not a good thing.
- Slow healing : Good mental and physical conditions promote healing. So, stress definitely slows down the healing process if you have a scar.
- Face shape changing : When the collagen is being ‘defeated’ by the excess cortisol hormone, your firm skin might changes its shape. For example, jaw clenching develops square-shaped face.
- Aging : Everyone will age, but stress will fasten the process by breaking out the healthy skin.
- Bye to smooth skin : Stress that damage collagen and elastin will force you to say bye to plump and smooth skin.
Stress is something that everyone need to deal with at least once in their lifetime, or probably more than once. Since you have known that stress is somehow responsible for those skin problems you’re getting as well, you should cope with stress. Who says fresh and dewy face can only be achieved through expensive skin care? Take care of your stress, and you’ll make that dream of having beautiful skin come true.