Regardless of how hard we try to take care of our skin, there are times when unexpected things happen that disrupt our routines. Life happens like a surprise breakup, family or money problems, late night cramming for important exams, more work being dropped into your lap from your employer to excess partying that can throw our skin in turmoil. However, there are 10 easy clues your skin is stressed to pay attention to if you value your beauty as well as health.
As the largest organ in our body, this eight-pound protective barrier doesn’t take well to stress. The first thing you might notice are more bouts of inflamed skin such as a new pimple or pimples popping up or current acne getting worse. The reason for inflammation from stressed skin is due to churning out an excessive amount of cortisol, the body’s stress hormone that causes a surge in oil production and a change in gut bacteria from the effects of stress in the digestive tract. On the other hand, you could just as easily notice your skin suddenly went from being normal too oily because of that surge in cortisol.
In addition to your normal cleansing routine, you may want to try a benzoyl peroxide spot treatment at night to kill bacteria and eating a healthier diet and less focus on junk foods while under stress.
Another of the clues of stressed skin is not only dullness, but more dryness as well. This loss of radiance and moisture is because stress stops the body from locking in water as it should. At the same time, stressed skin isn’t able to repair itself in the same way as healthy skin because of how slowly it will lose dead skin cells.
While the skin is still stressed, your goal is to trying to return the skin to its former healthy state. Therefore, you want to gently exfoliate and keep it hydrated. By remembering to follow those two steps can help stimulate the process of the normal skin renewal cycle and improve the beauty of your skin.
Something else that you may be experiencing can be an increase in facial redness or rosacea flaring up, which is another of the clues your skin is stressed. Though there are many reasons for facial redness and rosacea from the skin’s exposure to different extremes of temperature, spicy foods, and ones like caffeine, stress also can be a culprit.
A quick fix for addressing the redness of skin is turning to skin care products with anti-inflammatory ingredients. Look for ones such as chamomile, cucumber, licorice extract, aloe, allantoin that can provide that soothing cool feeling to the skin as well as calm the redness.
Your eyes can also give clues your skin is stressed with more under eye darkness to ugly, bloodshot red lines to puffiness. Though allergies can also account for this unwanted look, stress also can cause the blood pooling beneath the surface of the eyes. The blood vessels expand and puffiness and dark circles become more prominent.
A quick eye fix while stressed is splashing the cold water, using a cucumber slice or raw potato over the eyes, etc. Read my earlier post with natural fixes for puffy eyes with more that expands on this subject.
The scalp and hair can also be victims of stressed skin. Clues of stressed skin can range from dandruff, losing more hair in your brush, sink or floor to an irritated red scalp.
Stress can also stunt growth of the nails. It can also cause brittleness and nail peeling from what the body is going through during periods of stress.
The best thing you do is get more sleep, concentrate on a healthy diet, and try relaxation. Getting your nails back in great shape is not going happen overnight. After all, a nail grows at one-tenth of an inch a month.
Though I hate to tell you this, but stress can age you if you don’t get a handle on it in time. Prolonged stress causes those cortisol levels to eventually raise blood sugar enough to cause glycation. This process damages collagen and elastin, the protein fibers that give skin its plump and smooth appearance. Also, when you’re under stress, you also use muscle groups in the wrong. Every brow that furrows or frown lines done often enough become etched into permanent wrinkling from exercising them too much.
Stress is like a constant challenge that each of us must learn to deal with. The sooner that we recognize it such as with these 10 clues skin is stressed, the better for our beauty and overall health.
