Seven Steps of Stress & Your Skin
STRESS & SKIN
When it comes to healing your skin condition, I like to consider the body as a whole. I talk a lot about the incredibly calming benefits a healthy anti-inflammatory diet can have on skin, but it’s equally important to calm the mind. Easier said than done right? It’s very simple to ask someone to cut gluten or dairy or sugar from their diet, but I used to hate people suggesting to me that I ‘stopped getting stressed’. Like it was a switch I could simply turn off and on. Had it been that simple I would of course have turned my stress off. Problem solved. But the mind is a complex thing and unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as that.
When we consider the correlation between mental wellbeing and skin, there are hundreds of studies indicating a close correlation. Healing the mind can often be a huge step forward in healing the skin.
Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, MD, clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston explains;
"Studies that show that at least 30% of all dermatology patients have some underlying psychological problem that often goes unaddressed, at least on initial visit, but if addressed, it can have a very positive and powerful impact in improving the skin condition,"
So my first question is … are you stressed? To establish whether or not stress is having an impact on your skin condition, it’s important to understand what stress actually is. Of course we all know how stress feels, that overwhelming, panicky, anxious sensation - but what actually is it?
SEVEN STEPS OF STRESS
Put simply, stress is a natural mental and physical response to both positive and negative experiences. Here is how the body physically reacts when we find ourselves in a stressful situation;
1. Firstly an alarm sounds in the brain - when we feel, see or perceive a potential threat, the nerves trigger an alarm signal to put us on high alert.
2. This alarm signal targets an area in the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala deals with regulating our emotions. It in turn alerts the hypothalamus which controls our hormone production.
3. By now this response is travelling through the body, whilst the hypothalamus initiates a sequence that results in the production of a stress hormone called cortisol, the nervous system gets involved and releases adrenaline.
4. Cortisol enters the bloodstream and begins to travel around the body.
5. Our organs and tissues are peppered with proteins known as glucocorticoid receptors. Cortisol targets these proteins and latches onto them like a docking spaceship.
6. Cortisol boosts our blood sugar levels. Our heart begins to pound and oxygen flows to our major muscles.
7. We’re now officially in ‘fight or flight’ mode.
When we hear the word ‘stress’ we assume it to be a bad thing. But this seven step reaction is actually designed to protect us. Classed as ‘acute stress’ this short term burst of hormones and heightened senses keeps us safe in dangerous situations. It’s when we’re exposed to this same, repeated process day after day that stress becomes a problem.
Acute (short term) Stress
Is something we’re meant to experience. It keeps us safe in moments of potential danger. Acute stress (or good stress) is beneficial because it can provide a temporary extra boost of energy or alertness, which increases performance. Our reactions and response times speed up, enabling us to make split second decision in times of danger.
Chronic (long term) Stress
Repeated, long term annoyances such as despising a job, regularly getting wound up in rush hour traffic, having to deal with complicated relationships, family life and all those every day scenarios that create mental anguish can cause the body to activate the stress hormone continuously. The body begins to struggle resetting it’s hormones and inflammatory chemicals. We are permanently stressed. This is classed as chronic stress.
Rather than fire us up when needed, those hormones and brain chemicals stay with us in our system. The bursts of cortisol production that keep us safe during acute stress can end up present in the blood for long periods of time. If this occurs the body develops a resistance to cortisol and does not respond to it properly when it needs to. We’re all out of balance, our stress switch is permanently set to ‘on’. Through chronic stress our system gets confused and ramps up production of substances that actually promote inflammation leading to a further state of chronic inflammation. We’re stressed, we’re inflamed and all this can lead to like symptoms including anxiety, depression and sleep problems. Worse still are the risks of heart disease, high blood pressure and digestive issues.
There is a huge difference between short and long term stress. Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky succinctly explains the difference between the two and how this affects us;
"If you plan to get stressed like a normal mammal, you had better turn on the stress response or else you're dead. But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, like a Westernized human, then you are more at risk for heart disease and some of the other leading causes of death in Westernized life."
He’s right. Rather than look after us, stress is literally killing us.
STRESS & IMMUNITY
In autoimmune conditions such as psoriasis, arthritis and lupus, our immune system has already started to go haywire. The official job of the immune system is to fight harmful substances like the pathogens that cause infection and disease. Now all of a sudden it’s under all this permanent pressure. It doesn’t know the difference between real and false threats. Scientists have more recently been able to pinpoint markers that a stressful event can trigger which in turn trigger an autoimmune reaction.
Karen Mallin, PsyD, an instructor in the departments of psychiatry, behavioural sciences and dermatology at the University of Miami explains a new medical term being used to scientifically explain the correlation between stress and skin;
"Psychodermatogy is a field that addresses the impact of an individual's emotion as it relates to the skin. I think psychodermatology is going to be growing by leaps and bounds because dermatology is ready for a more integrated approach with other fields such as psychology, psychiatry, and even complementary medicine.”
"The mind and skin are connected on many different levels. A lot of nerve endings are connected to the skin, which wraps around the organs, so as emotions are played out neurologically, they can be expressed through the skin just as stress can be expressed through gastrointestinal symptoms, increased anxiety, or hypertension.”
It makes absolute sense for there to be this strong correlation between stress and our skin. We often consider the mind and the body as two separate entities, but of course every part of ourselves is intrinsically connected. Our brains and skin are derived from the very same cells, so it makes complete sense that one will strongly impact the other.
Whatever was going wrong for me on the inside in terms of anxiety, stress and emotional turmoil, was always immediately reflected on the outside. For some people it’s headaches or stomach pains - for me it was always skin flare ups.
Bruce Katz, MD, director of the cosmetic surgery and laser clinic at Mount Sinai Medical School, in New York, explains that for those of us with skin conditions it’s simply the primary target for expelling those stress toxins;
"It's the target organ theory, and certain people have different target organs that channel stress. Some people get ulcers, some people get migraines, and other people get rashes as the skin is their target organ.”
HOW TO RESOLVE STRESS
The key to stopping this vicious cycle of chronic stress is understanding the practical steps we can take to reduce and eliminate stress permanently. Being told to ‘stop getting stressed’ is not helpful to anyone! In my online skin healing course, I offer a step by step plan to help you make the necessary lifestyle changes to get your stress under control.
From establishing the connection between your stress levels and skin flare ups to working out a practical way of eliminating chronic stress, let’s get started today and improve your mind, body and skin for good.
