Stress is one of the biggest causes of premature aging. When your body is constantly under stress, it can lead to many lifestyle disruptions and health issues. It also speeds up how fast we age, resulting in the appearance of the dreaded fine lines and permanent wrinkles before our time. Understanding how stress negatively impacts you and your skin is the key to slowing down the natural aging process.
1. Decreases Blood Flow
Chronic stress lives and manifests in the body in alarming ways. When you are under stress, your blood vessels constrict, reducing blood flow to the skin. This deprives the skin of essential oxygen and nutrients, so it can’t breathe properly and will take on a dull appearance. It also accelerates the development of lines and wrinkles.
2. Spiked Cortisol Levels
Your body reacts to stress by elevating cortisol levels (the stress hormone). When cortisol spikes, you are in fight-or-flight mode. Living in this stressed-out state can trigger a breakdown of collagen, the proteins responsible for giving skin its firmness and structure. When collagen is damaged, your skin loses its firmness, resulting in sagging and more wrinkles.
3. Sleep-Deprived Skin
If you’ve ever experienced severe stress, you’ll know it wreaks havoc on your sleep. A lack of sleep or disrupted sleep patterns can throw out your circadian rhythms and hormones. This messes up the skin’s ability to repair itself, which it does overnight, making it more susceptible to wrinkles. If stress and sleep are an issue, implement a bedtime routine, listen to some calming music, or take some CBD or melatonin to help induce sleep.
4. Facial Tension
When you’re a stressed-out mess, it can make you tense your facial muscles unconsciously. Feeling anxious or stressed can lead to repetitive emotional expressions such as frowning, clenching, screwing up your face, and even eye twitching. Over time, these can turn into permanent expression lines, which grow up to become wrinkles.
5. Dehydrated Skin
When you don’t drink enough water, it shows up on your skin big time. Expect to see dryness and a dull complexion. Add in the stress factor, and you can trigger skin sagging and wrinkles fast. Stress can cause dehydration as it reduces water retention, and you might also be such a wreck that you forget to drink your 2.7 liters of water every day.
6. Diet Disruptions
In addition to forgetting to drink your H20 when you’re under stress, your healthy, balanced diet can go right out the window. Feeling anxious, time-poor, and depressed can either ruin your appetite or lead to emotional eating. In times of stress, you’re unlikely to tuck into your leafy greens and oily fish (both of which promote skin health) and seek comfort and relief from unhealthy eating habits. Processed foods and anything with high fat and high sugar content are the worst things you can eat for your skin. And the best ones for speeding up wrinkles.
7. Increased Inflammation
Stress triggers an inflammatory response in the body, which speeds up wrinkles. Chronic inflammation inhibits the skin’s natural repair and rejuvenation processes, slowing down cell turnover and the health production of collagen. This makes the skin more susceptible to environmental damage and makes healing and recovery from UV exposure, pollution, and other stressors take a lot longer.
8. Triggers Free Radicals
When subjected to stress, the body increases the production of free radicals, molecules that overthrow the balance of antioxidants, which are our body’s defense against toxins. Antioxidants protect our skin and body from damage, whereas free radicals are hellbent and inflicting it. When there’s an imbalance between the two, this leads to oxidative stress, which can damage the skin’s DNA, accelerating the aging process and causing more wrinkles.
9. Accelerates Genetic Aging
Aging is part of life, and the rate at which we age and how quickly we develop fine lines and wrinkles usually come down to aging. This is known as biological aging, and there isn’t much we can do about it. Premature aging is a different matter. Things like stress, smoking, a toxic lifestyle, and too much sun exposure can disrupt healthy collagen production, weakening the skin’s structure and making it more prone to wrinkles and sagging.
10. Weakens Skin Barrier
The effects of stress weaken the skin’s barrier as it disrupts the natural balance of oils and moisture. When your skin is less hydrated and protected, it can cause dryness and irritation, making the skin more vulnerable to external aggressors. Stress-induced inflammation can also damage the barrier, impairing its ability to repair itself and making it more prone to sensitivity, breakouts, and premature aging.
11. Blood Sugar Levels Spike
Stress increases blood sugar levels, which can cause glycation, a condition where sugar molecules attach to collagen fibers, making them stiff and prone to breakage. Collagen is the building block of the skin, so when it is damaged, it causes more wrinkles.
12. Throws Off Hormones
Given that the production of stress hormones speeds up in your body, ongoing stress also affects normal hormone levels. When hormones are out of balance, it can lead to all sorts of health and skin issues, including inflammation, irritation, increased sensitivity, and even acne. Hormonal fluctuations are also a major culprit in premature aging of the skin and body.
13. You Sweat More
We’ve all experienced it. You feel hot and flustered and start to sweat more. Stress-induced sweating can cause the skin’s pores to become clogged and congested, and this leads to breakouts and even more serious conditions like acne. Whenever the skin is upset or inflamed, it can contribute to aging and wrinkles.
14 Messes With Immune Function
Stress wreaks havoc inside and out. Increased cortisol levels can weaken the body’s immune system, making it and the skin more prone to infections, inflammation, and damage. When your immune system is compromised, it can show up on your skin fast in the form of premature wrinkles.
15. Impacts Your Lifestyle
When you’re stressed, you’ll do anything to get relief. This can lead to poor lifestyle choices such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and neglecting skincare. All of these are major factors in premature aging. Stress and anxiety can also lead to depression, which can kill your motivation, so your exercise regime can scream to a halt. A lack of exercise means reduced circulation and blood flow, so your skin is robbed of vital nutrients and oxygen, which, yes, you guessed it, means more wrinkles.