Why stress is a trigger for your acne and my 5 top tips to better manage your stress

Stress is undoubtedly a trigger for all of my clients, but what to do about it? Often there is a misconception that you just need to avoid stress, and whilst that is an ideal, it’s by no means practical or the only solution.

Today I want to explain how exactly stress can trigger acne and share my 5 top tips for managing your stress load.

When we are stressed a hormone called cortisol starts circulating around our body. The body can deal with small amounts of cortisol at appropriate times, e.g. running for the bus, quickly getting yourself out of the way of a bus. Our body is made to adapt to these short sharp bursts of stress, they are actually beneficial to us. 

Unfortunately one key flaw in the evolution of humans is that our stress response has not adapted to modern living. The stress of running for a bus makes up for a small part of our stress ‘load’. Most of our modern stress load is made up of long term stressors such as money worries, loneliness, self-esteem, break ups, pandemics!!! Stressors that we learn to live with, however that doesn’t unfortunately mean they aren’t potentially harming our health and skin.

How does stress affect out skin health?

• High cortisol impacts our immune response, lowering immune function meaning our skin takes longer to heal - think red scabs that take forever to go away - as well as being less able to defend itself against proliferation of acnes bacteria on the skin surface. 

• High circulating cortisol levels can also drive hormonal imbalance. The adrenal glands (where cortisol is released) will always take precedent over the production of our sex and thyroid hormones, leaving us more vulnerable to symptoms of hormonal imbalance such as infertility, PMS and acne.

• High cortisol drives sebum production making our pores a more hospitable environment for pimples to occur. 

• The impact that chronic stress has on our gut is now well recognised. If additional support is not given to digestion and gut health during periods of high stress, you are more at risk of ‘leaky gut’ developing. For some individuals what’s happening in the gut is reflected in the skin with loss of barrier function and dysbiosis contributing to break outs, bacteria overgrowth and slow wound healing. 

What can you do?

1. Identify stressors

   
   There is a high chance that a new client will only ever label their skin as their biggest stress in life, but when we dig a little deeper the truth will come out that there are a lot of things that are stressing them out. Getting to the root cause of these stressors is key, we don’t have to be able to change them or fix it necessarily, but awareness of what’s bugging you is key in order to move forward.

2. Reflect on how you are dealing with emotions

   
   Again, you don’t need to necessarily change anything right away, but just notice when emotions come up and reflect on where they are coming from - as opposed to running away from them as fast as you can and pretending everything is “a-ok”.

3. Equip yourself with self-care stress relieving tools

   
   Some of my favourites include:

   • Restore nutrient deficiencies causes by high levels of cortisol. These can include Magnesium, Zinc, Vitamin C and B vitamins.

   • Support the immune system and barrier function

   • Support digestion with bitters foods and mindful eating

   • Get back into your body with daily movement

   • Work on your sleep - aim for 8 hours per night and practice good sleep hygiene.

   • Boost your natural oxytocin (feel good hormone) levels with tough and massage. For those living on your own you can do this on yourself and still get benefits.

   • Getting outside in nature every day

   • Bring nature to you with plants and flowers in your house

   • Talk to someone, this could be a friend or trained professional.

4. Consider switching up your exercise routine

   If you rely on exercise to ‘de-stress’ consider reducing the amount of high intensity/cardio you do and replacing it for weight training or mindful movement. Exercise induces a stress response, which might be adding to your overall stress load and having downstream impact on your skin.

   I tend to be guided on how you feel after training, if you feel depleted and like it’s taking you a long time to recover I take that as a cue that your body has’t quite got the reserves to manage that much/type of exercise.

5. Ensure you are balancing your blood sugar levels

   Of course I have to talk about blood sugar levels. You’ve already learnt in earlier blogs that dips in blood sugar levels activates stress hormones. Again, a very clever evolutionary adaptation, but not well placed in todays society as we are never far from high calorie foods.

   Ensuring your are eating well balanced meals (think protein, fibre, complex carbs and healthy fats) at regular meal times and avoiding stimulants (stress!, sugar, caffeine, alcohol) forms the basis of well balanced sugar levels to support your mood, energy, hormones and skin.

You can find lots more information around the effect of stress on your skin as well as advice on how to reduce the negative impacts of stress on my free facebook group True Skin Nutrition Community and instagram page.