Stress kills your face

We all deal with stress – it’s a natural part of life.  When stress takes over our lives, it can affect a lot of things.  In fact, stress kills your face!

What is stress?

We all know what stress is – it’s that thing that makes us worry or get anxious.  It doesn’t make us feel good.  We’ll get knots in our stomach or ‘pits’.  It doesn’t feel good.  But what is stress really?

Stress is a natural response when you feel emotionally overwhelmed when things are just too much.  It can happen at work or in your personal life.  For example, we might feel stress at work when we have a bunch of deadlines coming due and we don’t feel prepared.  Or we’ll feel it in life when too much is going on – such as when your kids have a bunch of school or extracurricular activities, but we still need to take care of parents at the same time.

It just feels like ‘it’s too much’ and we feel like we can’t do it all.  It starts to affect us in many ways.  In fact, there are skin conditions caused by stress.

How stress affects your skin

Does stress cause bad skin?  Short answer:  yes!  Not only do we feel physical issues with stress like headaches and stomachaches, but the effects of stress on skin show up at the worst times.  When you’re stressed about those deadlines at work, you may get flare ups of existing skin conditions – whether they be eczema or acne.

Stress skin reaction

Some of the effects of the stress and anxiety we feel cause us to start bad habits such as:

• Insomnia – we’re worried so it’s difficult for us to get enough sleep at night.
• Alcoholism – maybe extreme but think about it, when we feel overwhelmed, we might have a glass of wine at night to settle ourselves down.  That one glass can turn into two, then to three, and maybe the whole bottle.  Not good.
• Anxiety related issues – For example:  do you pick at the skin around your nails or constantly touch your face?
• Unhealthy diet – are you eating too much chocolate or fast food?
• Exercise – are you getting enough exercise or are you too busy ruminating about what could happen (i.e. with that presentation or how you’ll get everything done you need to).
• Not drinking enough water – never a good thing!

Is stress bad for your skin?

But, how can this affect your skin?  Think about it, if you aren’t sleeping, you get bags and dark circles under your eyes.  If you’re drinking too much, your skin becomes dehydrated and will cause damage.  Plus, it can wreak havoc on our hormones – which causes so many other issues.  If you’re picking at your skin, you’re damaging it and you’ll see it everyday and so will everyone else.  It becomes a bad habit that is hard to get rid of.  That’s how stress kills your face!

What about the diet?  Eating too much sugar?  This can cause food allergies and you don’t need another thing to be stressed about.  Maybe you’re not exercising enough – this can cause inflammation in our body and exercise is a good way to heal inflammation.   Lastly, not drinking enough water is just causing more dehydration.  Dehydration leads to dry, wrinkly skin  These stress skin conditions aren’t helping you.  This is how stress kills your face.

Stress and skin care

Stress relief skin care is so important but not very easy to do.  I get it.  That’s why it is important to take regular breaks.  By regular breaks, this can mean meditating a couple times a week – even for 5 minutes.  It can also mean just taking a short walk to get some fresh air.

It has to be a priority.  I know it’s hard.  I’ve been through those times where it’s just too much.  When we feel that way, it’s hard to take care of ourselves.  The most important lesson I learned is that if I am ‘present’ (i.e. living in the moment), I am able to tackle things.  I don’t want stress skin so the more I go with the flow, the better.  It’s a constant battle but that’s life.  Accept it and start enjoying life.  Stress kills your face – don’t let it!  You’re stronger than that!