The stress theory of aging, also known as the hormonal theory, suggests that stress or stressful environments can disrupt normal cellular function and cause cellular damage, leading to system dysfunction and aging. As such, chronic stress can cause the skin to age faster.
Chronic stress can lead to DNA damage that causes us to age faster, developing a haggard appearance. Fortunately, there are some healthy habits that can counteract stress and powerful non-surgical treatments that can support youth, beauty, and overall mental wellness.
High levels of the stress hormone cortisol can cause the face to gradually swell into a rounded shape and is often the result of prolonged use of corticosteroids, Cushing syndrome or other underlying medical issues.
Or are they permanent? Dr. Yang: With short-term stress, there is always some reversibility. But the longer the person is under stress, the more permanent the wrinkles become.
Stress can temporarily change our biological age, but the process reverses when the stressor is resolved, according to a new study.
The cause is usually environmental and lifestyle factors. The most common signs of premature aging appear in your skin, with wrinkles, age spots, dryness or loss of skin tone. Healthy lifestyle habits can help stop and prevent further premature aging.
Let me break it down further: both “cortisol face” and “moon face” stem from a heightened amount of cortisol in the body caused by stress. However, “cortisol face” is temporary and can be reversed with better lifestyle choices like exercising or meditation.
“Feelings of emotional distress lead to the release of a stress hormone (cortisol) which delays healing, disrupts the skin's natural barrier and affects the immune system, making it less able to defend itself.” From red, dry and itchy skin to lines, wrinkles, pigmentation and dullness, difficult feelings can lead to ...
Common symptoms of this include weight gain, decreased muscle mass, developing a round face that is sometimes called a “moon face,” and developing a hump that appears on the back of the neck, also called a “buffalo hump.”
For starters, when people are depressed, they may end up tensing specific facial muscles, grimacing or frowning, and these "negative facial expressions can become sort of etched into the skin in the form of fine lines and wrinkles," Day explains.
Simple stress alone is unlikely to cause these changes in face or skin texture. Sustained high levels of physical or psychological stress can lead to some body and skin changes, but it's to a lesser extent. General stress beyond doubt can lead to weight gain and hard-to-lose weight despite eating healthy.
But there are ways to help your brain recover. For example: Regular exercise can help regulate your fight-or-flight response, and it can nourish areas of the brain to improve brain capacity and function. Meditation can both prevent and reverse the effects of stress.
In the meantime, the study might suggest that the haggard look and feel we get after a particularly stressful period in life might not be forever. We just need to make sure we actually take the time to recover from it.
Cortisol belly simply looks like abdominal fat, and there is no way to identify it by appearance. More important than its appearance is what cortisol belly can do to your health. Visceral fat is considered particularly dangerous because of its location near vital organs and its metabolic activity.
With age, that fat loses volume, clumps up, and shifts downward, so features that were formerly round may sink, and skin that was smooth and tight gets loose and sags. Meanwhile other parts of the face gain fat, particularly the lower half, so we tend to get baggy around the chin and jowly in the neck.
In telogen effluvium (TEL-o-jun uh-FLOO-vee-um), significant stress pushes large numbers of hair follicles into a resting phase. Within a few months, affected hairs might fall out suddenly when simply combing or washing your hair.
Getting enough restorative sleep can certainly help slow down the natural effects of aging and reverse the effects of premature aging. In the same way that getting too little sleep can lead to our hormonal dysregulation, getting enough sleep can restore hormonal balance in our bodies and reinstate healthy aging.
This is called extrinsic aging. As a result, premature aging can set in long before it was expected. In other words, your biological clock is more advanced than your chronological clock. Controllable factors such as stress, smoking and sun exposure can all play a role in expediting extrinsic aging.
In your 40s, your ageing skin can become drier, making lines and wrinkles more pronounced. You continue to lose subcutaneous fat, but not equally from all areas. Fat pads around the cheeks and above the mouth are generally the first to go, followed by fat from around the sides of the mouth, chin and jawline.