How does stress affect my skin?

It is clear to all of us that stress is an agent that negatively affects our health, and that we live in a society where the pace of life and the social, family, work and personal demands all too often rob us of our calm. However, stress, or rather cortisol, which is the hormone that causes us this state of alertness, is what we owe our survival to, because thanks to it we have overcome throughout history the dangers that threatened us and we have achieved individual survival and survival as a species, therefore we can say that stress is harmful, like almost everything else, in excess.

We live in a moment in history where we are living longer and longer, so aging in itself becomes a problem because it is related to the appearance of chronic diseases and in the case of the skin there are visible traits of oxidative stress that can lead to lesions and major diseases such as cancer .

There are two types of skin aging: chronological or natural aging, which is caused by the passage of time and results in the appearance of fine wrinkles, as well as other functional alterations of the skin, and premature aging, which is caused by extrinsic causes such as pollution, smoking, ultraviolet radiation, etc. But both manifest their results at the skin level through oxidative stress, since this is responsible for the decrease in the natural production of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid in our body, and also causes the loss of luminosity of the skin and the appearance of spots on our skin.

Therefore, when we talk about how stress affects the skin, we are actually talking about oxidative stress, which does not refer to our state of alertness, but to a cellular process inherent to aging, but which is affected by this other general stress.

Can we avoid oxidative stress?

Yes! We have many tools to combat it, as there are many causes:

• Reduce stress: learn to manage our emotions, control our breathing, activities such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness... or more physical activities such as moderate sports, contact with nature, etc.
• Sleep 7 to 8 hours a day, since cell regeneration and repair of the damage caused during the day to our skin takes place at night.
• Healthy diet, rich in antioxidants, avoiding processed foods.

• Avoid alcohol, tobacco smoke and ultraviolet rays.

• Incorporate daily skin care routines based on protecting ourselves from external factors that we know accelerate skin aging and incorporate by topical use those substances that our body stops producing naturally. That is to say a effective facial cleansing and deep cleansing that eliminates or diminishes the effects of environmental pollution on our skin; daily sun protection to combat the effect of ultraviolet radiation; incorporation of cosmetics with antioxidants to avoid oxidative stress such as serums and creams rich in Vitamin C Hyaluronic Acid and Resveratrol.

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