Stress may be good for your skin!

Couples often justify inexcusable behavior on the part of their spouses saying that 'he/she means well'. According to a recent study, this may in fact be true, assuming that your spouse is more concerned about your skin health than about your emotional well-being!

According to the study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology scientists studied the effects of stress on skin healing in mice with three types of common skin irritations. These included contact dermatitis, acute allergic contact dermatitis and atopic dermatitis, or eczema. Findings from the study indicate significant beneficial effects from stress, with a reduction in inflammation and rapid healing in all three types of skin irritation.

So how exactly does this work and is stress really good for you? In short doses, stress could be beneficial as it causes a release of steroid hormones called glucocorticoids, which exercise an anti-inflammatory effect. From an evolutionary perspective this made perfect sense, as in the absence of conventional medications and steroids, this natural steroid could help promote healing.

However, such beneficial effects are only visible when there is a moderate increase in glucocorticoids. In other words, short-term stress could be good for you, but prolonged and chronic stress can still be just as harmful. These same hormones, when present in excess, can impair the skin's normal protective function and inhibit wound healing.

Image source: Getty Images

With inputs from Science Daily

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References:

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). "Acute psychological stress promotes skin healing in mice." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 August 2014.

Lin TK, Man MQ, Santiago JL, Scharschmidt TC, Hupe M, Martin-Ezquerra G, Youm JK, Zhai Y, Trullas C, Feingold KR, Elias PM. Paradoxical Benefits of Psychological Stress in Inflammatory Dermatoses Models Are Glucocorticoid Mediated. J Invest Dermatol. 2014 Jul 3. doi: 10.1038/jid.2014.265. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 24991965.