TheStressCoach

les Stress -> Questions & Answers

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FOR HEALTHIER LOOKING SKIN, APPLY RELAXATION LIBERALLY

Les,

I looked through your library but did not see anything about stress and how it impacts your skin. I am 47, a female, and would like my skin to look as healthy as possible for as long as possible. I watch my time in the sun, put on moisturizers and that kind of thing and wonder if I should also pay closer attention to reducing stress for better skin.

Thank you.

Dear Asker,

The skinny on factors affecting skin appearance is pretty hefty. Heredity, allergies, vitamin intake, water consumption, smoking, and yes, stress, all rub the epidermis one way or the other.

It does look like stress may weaken the skin’s ability to keep bacteria out and water in, while lack of sleep could slow skin repair. Don’t try this at home, but researchers put tape on women volunteers and then yanked it off to create patches of damaged skin. Some of these subjects were then given fake interviews while the others went without a night’s sleep. You guessed it: the ripped skin on the gals who got no sleep took longer to return to normal according to the study results published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology in 2001. Tape-yanking aside, our skin needs to repair all the time from things like shaving, pimple-popping, sunburn, burn burns and scratches. Other studies have found that the skin of the perpetually stressed—people such as medical students during exams and caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients—also repaired more slowly than those who were less stressed.

You may have seen that I talk in other answers about stress being a potential trigger for flare-ups of existing conditions like herpes; well, add psoriasis (a disease that causes red, scaly patches on the skin) and dermatitis (skin inflammation often allergy related) to that list of stress-fueled symptoms.

So, your quest for healthy looking skin for the long haul should probably include stress management and adequate sleep along with all those creams and cotton balls.

Les
2/08