It's not just in your head — everyday stress, mood disorders, and even your emotion-driven facial expressions can affect your skin's health and appearance. Being stressed out can have a major impact on your health — and that extends to your skin health, too.
I didn't need a study to tell me that depression and appearance are closely aligned. After years spent in hospitals and mental health support groups, I can spot a depressed person from across the room. The sagging face always gives it away. I've often wondered: does gravity affect depressed people more than others?
Your face shape may change. Cortisol, the hormone released in response to stress, is the natural enemy of collagen, breaking down the connective tissue that keeps your complexion taut and firm.
See the lowered brow, the thinned lips and the flared nostrils? That's what social scientists call the "anger face," and it appears to be part of our basic biology as humans.
It's particularly important when it comes to your skin, as emotions can actually have a pretty drastic effect on it. Lengthy, intense or frequent periods of anger, stress and depression can all affect your skin in various ways.
Constantly stressing and overthinking may lead to frowning of brow which over a period of time may become a permanent wrinkle. Chances are high that a depressed person may not drink enough water. This makes their skin dehydrated and dull. Low mood and high-stress flare acne issues.
Emotional Effects on Our Skin
You've probably already noticed that feelings of stress, anger, or sadness can wreak havoc on your skin. Our emotions reflect through our skin in acne, hives, and even dryness. And while there will never be a way to just stop feeling these things, there are ways to cope with them.
It's not just in your head — everyday stress, mood disorders, and even your emotion-driven facial expressions can affect your skin's health and appearance. Being stressed out can have a major impact on your health — and that extends to your skin health, too.
Changes To Hair And Skin
The stress-related skin changes we see often show up as fine lines (whether those be horizontal or vertical lines), less elasticity, more oil on the skin, and shifts in pigmentation. Eye circles, on the other hand, are usually created due to stress diverting blood away from the face.
Scientists say that this is due to the anxiety hormone cortisol, which increases glucose in the body, inhibits muscle and bone growth and makes people appear less healthy and therefore less attractive.
Diamond. The diamond shaped face is the rarest of face shapes, and is defined by a narrow forehead, wide cheekbones and a narrow chin.
Lighter skin may occur throughout the body. Redder Skin On the opposite end, anxiety can also cause skin to be redder/pinker - especially around the face and head. This is caused by capillaries in the face dilating, which allow in more blood and can make the skin of the face noticeably red.
“All of this happens with chronic stress -- if you do not have healthy collagen in your skin, you would have baggy sort of skin under your eyes.” And stress can also lead to less melanin, causing that jaundiced, haggard look. Melanin pigments the skin, giving humans their complexion.
Depression and Vision
Light sensitivity: Patients may experience discomfort in daylight without a pair of sunglasses. Watery and strained eyes: Some individuals report watery eyes and pain from strained eyes. Eye floaters: Patients sometimes report the appearance of spots in their vision.
A downhill spiral occurs and our skin finds it harder and harder to naturally keep itself well. Experts in both skin and psychology have found that mental health conditions contribute directly to skin problems. For example, skin conditions such as acne are easily triggered or made worse by emotional stress.
Our nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones—the worst offender being cortisol, which prompts the skin's sebaceous glands to pump out more oil (causing congestion and pimples) and accelerates our skin's aging process by reducing collagen and elastin.
Alterations in physical appearance are one quite common lifestyle change as a reaction to stressful events. Kiecolt (1994) postulated a theory of intentional self- change following multiple stress events, at least one of which being a critical stress event of personal significance.
Stress Releases Cortisol, Causing Collagen Breakdown
That includes your skin. If you're chronically worried (or losing sleep over stress), your body is pumping out stress hormones nonstop, which can cause premature aging.
The same is true of our facial muscles. Those of us who smile a lot are in effect, exercising our “smiling muscles,” and may thus end up looking different from those who smile less often. These observations lend support to the idea that our personality and behaviors are not unrelated to how we look.
Your body responds to the way you think, feel, and act. This is one type of “mind/body connection.” When you are stressed, anxious, or upset, your body reacts physically. For example, you might develop high blood pressure or a stomach ulcer after a particularly stressful event, such as the death of a loved one.
You've heard of the sex glow, but there's a love glow too. With increasing blood flow to the skin, being in a happy relationship gives your skin cells nutrients and oxygen to make you look physically younger.
Sadness. Facial movements: Inner corners of eyebrows raised, eyelids loose, lip corners pulled down. Sadness is hard to fake, according to researchers. One of the telltale signs of sadness is the inner-brow raise, which very few people can do on demand.
A person with a sad expression on their face conveys a potent message. Drooping eyelids, downcast eyes, lowered lip corners, and slanting inner eyebrows have an arresting effect on observers.