In a study at Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Francisco Tausk and his colleagues sought to establish the link between stress and skin cancer. While acute (short-term) stress actually boosts immune function, chronic (long-term) or daily stress appears to interrupt healthy skin function. Evidence emerging within the past several decades suggests that emotional states such as depression, worrying, hostility, and psychosocial stress directly influence both body function and health.
As we learn more about the brain-skin interplay, we now believe that our mental state is highly related to skin function in humans. Along with skin cancer and premature skin aging, a large number of chronic skin diseases, including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis, appear to be precipitated or exacerbated by psychological stress. This assumption was confirmed in findings published in the July 2003 edition of the journal Archives of Dermatology, when Dr. Susan Chon and colleagues at Stanford University concluded that emotional stress influenced the severity of acne. While this connection had been long suspected (even now, don’t you often see a pimple during particularly stressful times?), these researchers found that patients with acne experienced a significant worsening of the skin disease during times of increasing external stress.
Other dermatological studies have concluded the same: psychological stress has a significant and detrimental effect on treatment outcome in those individuals with problem skin.
As we learn more about the brain-skin interplay, we now believe that our mental state is highly related to skin function in humans. Along with skin cancer and premature skin aging, a large number of chronic skin diseases, including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis, appear to be precipitated or exacerbated by psychological stress. This assumption was confirmed in findings published in the July 2003 edition of the journal Archives of Dermatology, when Dr. Susan Chon and colleagues at Stanford University concluded that emotional stress influenced the severity of acne. While this connection had been long suspected (even now, don’t you often see a pimple during particularly stressful times?), these researchers found that patients with acne experienced a significant worsening of the skin disease during times of increasing external stress.
Other dermatological studies have concluded the same: psychological stress has a significant and detrimental effect on treatment outcome in those individuals with problem skin.
