Stress can mess up your skin and hair – here’s how

Every woman dreams of having glowing, radiant and flawless skin like the Disney movie princesses. But even with proper skincare habits, it becomes tough most of the times. While exposure to air pollution, chemical products and the food we eat are factors that can hamper our skin, let’s not underestimate the effect of stress on it. Yes ladies, your state of mind can affect the way you look.

Many women try ample beauty products, expensive products, or natural homemade products in the pursuit of that mythical ‘glass-like skin’ and sharp facial features. But regardless of the efforts and products you purchase, your skin may hardly have a glow if your mind constantly experiences stress.

Stress not only affects the immune system but leads to detrimental skin problems like acne, marks, pimples, dry skin, wrinkles, fine lines, etc. Recently, popular dermatologist Dr Jaishree Sharad shared an Instagram post, suggesting 3 ways to avoid stress and what stress can do to your skin.

“The brain recognizes an abnormal event such as threat or stress. The threat could be anything – from strenuous physical exertion, mental stress, anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, starvation diets, anger, illness, injury, infection to even routine irritability,” wrote Dr Sharad.

3 ways to reduce or avoid stress:

1. Meditate:

* Meditating daily reduces stress and calms the mind.
* You should meditate daily for at least 20 minutes.
* Meditation not only calms the mind but also enhances your physical power.

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2. Exercise:

Exercising daily can boost your immunity, mental health as well as enhance your beauty by keeping you in shape and reducing skin problems. To avoid stress, try pursuing a new hobby like aerobics, Zumba, yoga or cardio, or gymming. There are numerous ways of exercising to calm your mind and reduce stress in your life.

3. Manage your time:

It’s important to reduce stress. One should learn time management skills and ways to manage stress by managing your work and home. Work-life balance and time management are two important factors that can affect your physical and mental well-being. You should manage your time and maintain a healthy work-life balance to reduce the stressful events in your daily routine.

According to Dr Sharad, stress increases the formation of the free radicals in the body including the skin.

7 skin problems that can happen due to stress:

1. Dark circles and baggy eyes

The area under the eyes has the most sensitive and soft skin. Experiencing excessive stress leads to the formation of dark circles and baggy eyes. Though it is common with aging as the muscles around the eyes weaken, chronic stress contributes towards faster aging and puffy eyes.

2. Sensitive skin

Chronic stress and unstable mind makes the skin more sensitive by releasing inflammatory neuropeptides in the skin. This could lead to itching, redness, hives, etc.

3. Develop or exacerbates existing skin problems

Stress can flare up or worsen pre-existing skin conditions like such as psoriasis, eczemas, rosacea, seborrhoeic, dermatitis, atopic dermatitis, pruritus, alopecia areata etc.

The problem of acne, pimple, and dry skin also gets triggered due to stress. Chronic stress can lead to marks on the skin especially the face and a never ending cycle of pimples and acne.

4. Increase oil production

Stress increases oil production leading to clogged pores, whiteheads, and blackheads.

5. Causes wrinkles and fine lines

Constantly facing stressful events leads to the release of free radicals in the skin which accelerate the degradation of collagen and elastin fibers resulting in fine lines and wrinkles

6. Excessive hair loss

Causes excessive hair loss by speeding up the hair cycle and moving the hair to the telogen (rest) phase.

7. Speeds up greying of hair.

Stress can make your hair go grey. Also, chronic stress can disrupt your hair’s growing cycle and lead to severe hair fall.