You hear a lot about stress.
In today’s modern world, stress has become a part of our lives. You hear a great deal about how it can affect you and your health. With the varied effects of stress, one thing that you might be concerned with is how it can affect your skin.
In the next few minutes, you will learn how stress can affect your skin and how you can combat it by de-stressing yourself after a tiring day.
What is Stress?
Before we discuss the effects of stress and how you can counter it, we need to understand what it is.
You might have a few ideas about stress but when you try to define it, you might have a hard time. Don’t worry because you are not alone in feeling that way. To put it simply, stress is a very broad term.
The term stress was coined by Hans Selye in the 1930s to refer to the response of the body to demands of change. The stressors, or those that impose the demand to change on the body, can be mental, physical, and environmental. Things like physical activities, life changes, work, school, or traumatic events can cause stress.
In other words, you cannot escape stress. As long as you are alive, you will be experiencing some kind of stress.
It’s also crucial to take note that not all types of stress are bad. It can help you to prepare when you have to do some important task. It can also be life-saving as it helps to condition the body to be in the right condition for a demanding physical situation.
How Stress Affects your Skin
That being said, it’s now time to discuss how stress can affect your skin. Here are the top five:
- It Can Cause Acne Breakout
Acne can be caused by a lot of things but stress can be a factor for it to break out. If you are suffering from a bad bout of acne breakout lately and if you go back to the past few weeks, it would not be surprising to know that you have been under a great deal of stress during that period.
Stress causes certain hormones to be released which makes the sebaceous glands of your skin to produce more oil. The increase in oils causes acne to breakout.
- Flushed Face
When you become stressed, that can cause you to take short and shallow breaths. A common way of dealing with that is by holding one’s breath for a long time. This method may not be effective and instead can cause your face to look flushed.
- It Causes Hives and Rashes
You should not be surprised to learn that you have lots of bacteria in your body. There are good and bad bacteria there. The problem is when there is an imbalance between the good and the bad bacteria. That imbalance can occur because of stress and would result in rashes and hives in appearing all over your skin.
- Dry Skin
Another common effect of stress on the skin is to cause it to go dry. Stress can reduce the lipid barrier of the skin which helps to keep it moisturized. Stress can also reduce the ability of the skin to renew itself by flaking off.
- Eye Bags
When you are stressed, you find it difficult to get some sleep and rest. The most obvious effect that this will have on you is to cause the development of eye bags. Eye bags are caused by fluid collecting on your lower eyelid area. That causes you to walk around with a puffy eye and the longer you are stressed, the more prominent it becomes.
So, how do you find these effects of stress on your skin?
The good news for you is that there are proven and effective ways of combating stress. Here are some of those:
- Avoid caffeine
- Get more sleep
- Indulge in physical activity
- Try relaxation techniques
- Talk to someone
- Take control of your situation
- Manage your time properly
- Keep a stress diary
Try to follow these tips and the stress in your life is sure to be reduced. Now, you cannot expect to zero out your stress. To experience stress is part of being alive. You just have to learn how to cope with it and reduce it.
