Stress and Your Skin

We all know that stress-whether from work, home troubles, or personal worries, can make us feel tired and run-down, but did you know that stress can drastically affect your skin? Here we look at how stress affects your skin and what you can do to ease stress-related skin problems.

Written by Lisa Powell, Green Health Research Contributor

How Can Stress Affect Your Skin?

For years doctors and scientists went back and forth over the issue of whether or not stress could affect your skin. Some said yes, while others said no, skin problems were genetic and environmental and not influenced by psychological factors like how stressed a person feels.

However, it is now generally accepted that stress does play a part in the quality of your skin’s tone and appearance. The new field which studies how psychological factors like stress affect the physical quality of skin is called ‘psychodermatology.

Psychodermatology looks at how stress both causes skin problems and how worrying about skin problems can trigger stress and then lead to even worse skin. For example, doctors are now studying how when under pressure our bodies excrete more of the stress hormone cortisol, and how this hormone triggers the skin to produce more oil which can lead to acne breakouts.

Besides acne, other skin conditions which are exacerbated by stress include psoriasis, rosacea, and hives. All of these conditions can also make a person feel self-conscious or unhappy, and this emotional stress can then cause their existing physical skin problem to become worse.

Skin conditions which physically become worse when a sufferer is under stress are called psychophysiologic disorders, while skin disorders which can actually lead the sufferer to become depressed or develop other psychological symptoms are called secondary psychiatric disorders.