Terri Ramsey Beavers Did you know that some stress is good for you? It’s true; being stressed from time to time will increase your alertness, make you more aware of what’s happening around you, and even make you more productive. However, chronic stress – stress that is with you all the time no matter what else is happening – is not a good thing and can lead to many problems, including heart disease, ulcers, high blood pressure, insomnia, and more. One of the issues that many people don’t realize is associated with high levels of stress is problems with your skin. Read on to find out how stress can affect your skin and what you might be able to do about it.
Inflammation
Stress can trigger episodes of inflammation. When you are stressed, no matter what the cause, your digestive process slows down. The more stressed you are – and the longer you are stressed – the slower your digestive processes are going to be. This is a problem because it means the balance of good and bad bacteria within your gut is affected, and you’ll have more unhealthy bacteria than healthy in your system.
Among the many problems this imbalance of bacteria will cause, one is known as dysbiosis. Essentially, this creates small holes in the stomach lining, allowing the bad bacteria to pass through and travel around the body, which in turn leads to inflammation – the body thinks it is being attacked, so it becomes inflamed as a way of protecting itself.
Dry Skin
When we are stressed, something else is that the ‘fight or flight’ response begins to set in. When stressed, the body becomes aware that there is danger around and gets ready to either confront that danger or run away from it. In small doses, this is very useful, but when it’s chronic, your hormone levels will be affected, as there will be spikes in how much cortisol and adrenalin you produce. There are many things that happen to the body in this situation, but one is that we sweat more. This will dry out the skin.
Unless you can replace the missing fluid quickly, your skin will become painfully dry, and if you have eczema, it will become much worse. If this happens to you a lot, you can find a Products by Lizzie Discount Code online to help you buy cream to soothe your skin. Of course, destressing will also need to take place; otherwise, you’ll never really get your skin condition under control.
Oily Skin
It might seem strange that oily skin is a symptom of stress since we have just finished talking about how it can lead to dry skin, but it is true. This is down to the amount of cortisol we have in our bodies.
When there is a lot of cortisol, the sebaceous glands in the skin become more open, and therefore more oil comes out and into the skin’s surface. This is not a positive thing in itself, but once these glands are open, dirt and germs can enter, and this leads to acne. The less stressed you can be, the healthier your skin will look and feel.