The everyday tips you need to keep stress from showing up on your face.

Stress affects every one of us. I would love to tell you to stop stressing and relax, everything will work out, but you and I both know that is not reality. Our stress levels are higher than ever, and it affects our health and skin. Today, we are breaking down what stress is, what it does, how it impacts our health and skin, and how to manage stress through nutrition and mindfulness. Let’s dig in!

What is Stress?

Stress is the body’s natural & physical response to a challenge. And here’s the truth…not all stress is bad; our bodies are designed to handle stress. We can’t survive without stress; we live in an ever-changing environment, and we are wired to respond to daily stressors. Stressful situations activate our HPA-axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), signaling our adrenal glands to release cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, which naturally rises and falls throughout the day. In moments of received danger, our body taps into reserved energy stores by increasing cortisol and adrenaline because we are designed to run for our lives. 

What Happens if your Stress Level is too High?

If stress levels remain high for long periods, your body enters a state of chronic stress. Chronic stress continually activates the HPA axis, releasing cortisol, and our body believes it’s under attack. Chronic stress means a constant release of cortisol, which affects melatonin production and our endocrine system, leading to mental health problems, chronic pain, and inflammatory skin problems.

How Long Does it Take Your Body to Recover?

Depending on the severity of your stress levels, chronic stress can lead to burnout. However, once we get to this point, stress has been building for some time. Many of us feel stress symptoms, but ignore the signs and push through until our body gives in. Stress recovery is not overnight; it is a process, and can take time. Some programs can help you manage your stress levels, but typically it takes 30 days or longer. And the goal is to help you manage your stress because many of us can’t remove our daily stressors.

How Stress Affects Your Health

Chronic stress is a contributing cause to IBS and gut health problems. Your body slows down digestion to protect itself, and it does so daily. Here’s how stress disrupts your internal balance:

Hormone levels: our hormones are being produced daily, no matter what stage of life you’re in. They can’t keep circulating through your body, so they get removed via the intestines and kidneys.

Constipation: prevents your body from excreting waste, toxins, and hormones. Most women don’t go to the bathroom daily, which means we don’t rid our bodies of hormones. Excess hormones can cause hormonal imbalances. Chronic stress slows digestion because if you were running for your life, the last thing you would be thinking about is stopping to use the bathroom.

Inflammatory diet: damages the intestinal wall, leading to increased gut permeability and leaky gut. When stressed, we crave salty, sugary, processed foods. These foods cause inflammation in our bodies and damage our gut. Plus, this affects our gut microbiome. Poor gut health leads to health and skin problems.

Weakened immune system: leaves you with frequent colds or viruses. Your body can’t fight infections. When your body is run down, it impacts your gut, the root of your immune system. 

What are the Five Warning Signs of Stress?

Stress shows warning signs, and it’s up to us to pay attention. Many of us get stuck in the cycle and ignore the signs and symptoms. Rogers Behavioral Health defines the five warning signs: “Persistent exhaustion, feeling indifferent, less connected, thinking more negatively, and becoming more easily annoyed or frustrated, being forgetful, and experiencing headaches, stomachaches, changes in sleep, or appetite.”

What Happens to Your Skin When You’re Stressed?

Skin’s stress response:

Our skin can physically handle stress via receptors that sense hot, cold, and pain, and send signals to our brain to respond. Our skin has nerves throughout. Within these layers, stress hormones can accumulate and attack our oil glands, collagen, and pigment cells. Stress prevents our skin cells from working properly, impacting the health and function of our skin barrier. When our body becomes stressed, it triggers neuropeptides and neurotrophins that produce nerve growth factor that binds to receptors and triggers an inflammatory response. 

How our skin responds to stress:

Once nerve growth factors are activated, you’ll see negative changes in your skin: acne, premature aging, melasma, sensitive skin, and hair loss. Stress affects our wound response, the skin flares up, and doesn’t heal quickly. You may notice your skin feels both oily and dry at the same time, giving it a rough texture; this is called dehydrated skin. Stress breaks down the skin barrier, allowing for harmful substances to penetrate, skincare products cause skin reactions, and the skin becomes excessively dry. Cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine increase DNA and UV damage, breaking down collagen and elastin in the skin. Lastly, oxidative stress affects mitochondria by depleting the cells’ energy, preventing cells from functioning. When these factors happen, aging pops up overnight.

What Skin Conditions are Triggered?

The most common skin conditions are acne, rosacea flare-ups, eczema, psoriasis, and sensitive skin. Sometimes these skin conditions are triggered because stress causes gut problems by creating inflammation and gut dysfunction, resulting in skin problems. We have talked about the gut-skin axis in prior blogs and our podcast. Let’s connect the brain and the nervous system, which is called the Gut-Skin-Brain Axis. The gut-brain axis has been studied extensively, and newer research has added the skin. Our skin and gut have similar microbiomes and bacterial makeup. According to Rupa Health, “Psychological stress can impair the barrier function of the skin – the epidermis. This outermost layer, responsible for locking in moisture and protecting against harmful microbes, can be disrupted under stress, thereby leading to irritated skin and potentially exacerbating conditions like eczema and psoriasis.”

How to Reverse Skin Damage

The good news is that stress skin damage can be reversed! We take an inside-out approach to skin health. We like to treat the skin inside and out. 

Inside: Eliminate inflammatory foods, processed foods, sugars, gluten, and dairy. Opt for a diet high in fatty red meat, which is a complete protein and supplies your body with amino acids to keep your skin working optimally. Drink water to hydrate and flush toxins. Exercise, either light or heavy, to get your blood flowing and help your skin detox. Get plenty of rest; your body repairs itself when you sleep. Insomnia or not sleeping enough raises cortisol levels and keeps your body in a stressed state. We offer functional testing for cortisol to balance your body and support healing.

Outside: Simple is best. Use a cream or oil cleanser and a hydrating moisturizer twice a day. Do a gentle gommage exfoliation once a week. Now that we are in winter, add a hyaluronic serum in the morning and an anti-aging serum at night. If you are struggling with acne, either a spot treatment serum at night or an all-over hydrating acne oil during the day calms breakouts.

Can Stress Permanently Age You?

Chronic stress speeds up aging; however, if you eliminate your stressors or work to manage stress, you can reverse signs of aging. 

How to Reset Your Body From Chronic Stress

You don’t have to deal with chronic stress forever! There are ways to help reset your body and mind so you can manage stress, especially when you can’t avoid certain stressors in your life. We like to focus on nutrition and mindfulness as the key players in this game.

Stress management with proper nutrition:

• Eliminate sugary, processed, or pre-packaged foods. These contain additives and chemicals that affect your endocrine system and can worsen your adrenals and how your body handles stress
• Limit your caffeine intake, especially late in the day. Caffeine can elevate cortisol levels
• Avoid alcohol, which disrupts your sleep cycle, increases cortisol, and is loaded with sugar
• Incorporate an anti-inflammatory diet, such as Keto, Mediterranean, Autoimmune Protocol, and/or Carnivore diets. When it comes to diet plans, you have to be your own advocate. Try different diets and find what works best for you. Everybody is different; there isn’t a one-size-fits-all.

Four Diet Plans You Can Try:

Keto, also known as the Ketogenic Diet, consists primarily of protein and fat, with limited carbohydrates. Carbs do NOT include bread, pasta, or any type of gluten-free foods. Keto gets carb intake from fruits and vegetables. The goal of the ketogenic diet is to use the body’s natural glucose from the liver instead of glucose from foods, putting you into a state of ketosis. Ketosis means your body is converting glucose into ATP, the energy of our cells, leading to weight loss, health improvement, and increased energy. This is an easy diet to follow because there are so many foods you can recreate, so you never feel deprived.

The Mediterranean diet

It got its name from the countries in the Mediterranean. A concern with this diet is that the recommended amounts are not sustainable for everyday. Daily recommendations include:

3-9 servings of vegetables
½ to 2 servings of fruit
1-13 servings of cereal (Europe’s wheat is different than ours)
Up to 8 servings of olive oil
Minimal protein from fish or poultry

For the American lifestyle, this diet plan is difficult to sustain long-term, but it is a good guide if you’re just getting started.

The Autoimmune Protocol (AIP)

This is a personalized elimination diet plan that excludes any foods that trigger an inflammatory response, helping the body heal from inflammation and repair the gut microbiome. There are three phases in the AIP diet:

Phase 1: Elimination – lasts from 6 weeks to 6 months

In this phase, you eliminate any food that can cause an inflammatory response in the body. Once inflammation is down, you can move to the next phase.

Phase 2: Reintroduction – lasts from 1-3 months

In this phase, you slowly reintroduce food. If you don’t have an inflammatory response, this food can stay in your diet. If you have an inflammatory response, you know to avoid it.

Phase 3: Maintenance – for the long term

This is your lifetime diet plan. As long as you avoid foods that don’t trigger inflammation, you’ll stay healthy and inflammation-free.

The Carnivore Diet

This diet consists of eating beef, butter, eggs, and salt. However, many carnivores do consume dairy for extra fat. This diet is simple. The concept behind carnivore is to eat as the cavemen did. Many carnivores include intermittent fasting or squeeze their meals into a few hours. 

Now that you have information on the different diet plans, I suggest you do some of your own research and implement these into your life. Diet really is personal, and it should be because all of us have different health conditions and needs!

Stress Management with Mindfulness 

Incorporating mindfulness practices into your daily life helps lower stress levels. This includes meditation, breathwork, journaling, yoga, and exercise. Here are some healthy tips to implement in your life…

Exercise: Exercise can be short, think HIIT workouts, or longer, like running, walking, or strength training (Bonus if you can get outside and walk every day!). No time to take a class or go to a gym? Stretch or move for 5-10 minutes at home, or take a quick walk around the block. Movement increases blood flow and balances cortisol.

Breathing: Learn how to breathe. Incorporate breathing by pausing to take 5 deep breaths when you lie down in bed at night or when you’re waiting to pick up your kids from practice or school. If you need a mental break from work, stand up from your desk and take 5 slow, deep breaths to calm your mind and recharge. Breathwork is another technique that balances cortisol. You can find breathwork videos on YouTube.

Meditation: Meditation teaches you to get out of your head and calm your mind. For some people, this can be difficult, especially during stressful times. If you can close your eyes, pause your racing mind, and observe that voice making you crazy, this helps you destress. For some people, it’s difficult to quiet their mind; however, guided meditations are a better option. YouTube is a great place to find guided meditations, which are great for beginners.

Journaling: Journaling is similar to meditation. Grab a notebook and write down every thought that comes to your mind. When stressed, I write down all my angry thoughts and either rip the paper to shreds or burn it to release it from my mind. Journaling is a great way to start or end your day. If you don’t know what to write, start with 5 things you’re grateful for. Sitting in silence and just letting the words flow through your hand is a powerful practice and a great tool for releasing stress.

Work with Us to Manage Your Stress

If you want to learn exactly what is going on with your stress levels and hormones, we would love to work with you. At Skin Deep Esthetics, we offer the DUTCH test, which you do at home. DUTCH tests your hormone and cortisol levels and looks for signs of imbalance and stress markers. After we get your results, we create a customized plan to help you ease stress and learn to live a healthier life.

Click here to schedule your functional consultation today.