I truly believe that this one emotion, this one mindset, causes a huge chain reaction of problems inside of our bodies.
Yes I’m talking about stress.
Stress is so incredibly destructive to our bodies that it can cause diseases, heart attacks, depression, insomnia, lower sex drive, fertility problems, headaches, premature aging, and much more.
Not only does stress cause all of these problems inside of our bodies, but it can also lead to you breaking out with a ton of painful acne.
Let’s find out how this happens.
How Does Stress Cause Acne?
Let’s say that your running late for work and it’s your first day on the job.
Your hypothalamus, located at the base of your brain, sends out an order to release stress hormones (adrenaline + cortisol).
This is when you are going to start breathing heavily, muscles tense up, and your heart begins to pound.
What you don’t realize is that your body is now in the fight or flight mode.
Your body naturally puts you in this state when you are facing some kind of emergency or danger.
This is an amazing thing that the body can do, but the problem is if your constantly in this state, due to stressors in your every day life, this can cause your body to wreak a bunch of problems.
And since our bodies natural response to stress is to release hormones, staying stressed for long periods of time, or pretty often, can mess with your health.
Some Symptoms of Extreme Stress:
•Depression
•Anxiety
•Insomnia
•Irritability
•Migraine Headaches
Let’s find out some ways that chronic stress can wreak havoc on our bodies, leading to acne.
Our Body And Stress
Immune System-
Your immune system is in charge of fighting against illness and infection. It fights against any bacteria, viruses, parasites, germs, and anything unfamiliar that could be a threat to your body’s health.
Being under continuous stress can weaken your immune system, and cause it to not be able to protect your body from outside infections.
Most of our immune system is located inside our gut, being very susceptible to bugs that need to be under control.
Too much stress and your immune system with suffer.
Digestive System-
When we are prone to a lot of stress, this can actually damage our extensive intestinal lining.
A healthy gut lining has a tight barrier, able to control what gets digested, and what gets absorbed into our blood stream.
Well when our gut lining is compromised, tiny holes and cracks occur in our intestinal walls and as a result bacteria, bugs, food and toxins enter into our blood stream.
And do you know what happens next?
Inflammation occurs!
This process is known as leaky gut.
It’s also very important to have a balance of good and bad bacteria in our gut. Too much bad, and it can lead to a bunch of unwanted diseases.
An unhealthy gut can quickly lead to acne.
Read more about an unhealthy gut here.
Central Nervous System-
Your central nervous system is in charge of your fight or flight response. The hypothalamus is in charge of commanding the release of stress hormones, which helps to aid your body of any danger.
But when the danger is gone and if our hormone levels don’t decrease, then we’ve got a problem.
If the central nervous system doesn’t go back to its normal state, then we’re left with being in the state of fight or flight for long periods of time.
This can cause an unhealthy amount of hormones being released and to become imbalanced, which can result in many problems including acne.
Read more on how to tell if your hormones are causing your acne here.
Eliminating Stress
I personally have been dealing with healing my body and getting all of my stress levels down for quite some time.
Because of a direct result of stress, I’ve had very imbalanced hormones, my gut has been taking a toll, and I’ve been dealing with a lot of acne.
It’s been a process of 2 years now, but because I’ve been proactively working on reducing my stress levels, my acne is finally healing!
Let me tell you that if you can eliminate stress from your life (as much as you can), this can save you from a chain reaction of damaging your immune system, gut health and hormone levels.
Some Practical Ways to Decrease Stress:
•Take a yoga class
•Breath exercises
•Journal
•Read a book
•Get good sleep
•Take a walk in nature
•Take a break from screens
•Calming Teas: peppermint +chamomile
•Eat Healthy
•Supplements: Ashwagandha, Bacopa, Valerian Root (talk to you doctor to see if any of these would help you).
I believe that the first step you should take to clear your skin is taking control of how much you stress throughout your day.
Then you’ll be on your way to healing your acne, and leveling out each of these very important parts of your body!
100 Summers 