Skin Under Stress.(skin care)

Byline: Sarah Van Boven PHOTOGRAPHED BY NICOLAS MOORE

When anxiety spikes, skin issues do, too, with breakouts, dryness, and wrinkles. Doctors tell you how to fight the signs of stress.

We've all read the headlines; we all know the numbers. Stock markets: down. Retail spending: bleak. Job creation: yeah, right. But it turns out there's at least one tiny sector of the economy that's boomingand it's hardly a coincidence. "Right now I'm busier than I've ever been," says Leslie Baumann, director of cosmetic dermatology at the University of Miami Cosmetic Medicine and Research Institute. "And I'd say 50 percent of my patients are presenting stress-related skin problems." Pimples that appear out of nowhere, parched skin, you name it: "Anything that's wrong with your complexion, stress makes it worse," says dermatologist Karyn Grossman, who has offices in Santa Monica and New York City. In an allure.com poll, nearly 87 percent of respondents said they notice a difference in their skin when they're stressed out.

So what's going on in your anxious epidermis? After all these millennia, our bodies still react to external challenges with the same old fight-or-flight syndrome, an adrenaline surge that elevates the level of a hormone called cortisol in the blood. Cortisol tells fat cells to dump sugar into the bloodstream for energywhich is great if you need to outrun a saber-toothed tiger for 100 yards, but not so great when your enemy is an overflowing email in-box. Over time, cortisol and other biological by-products of stress damage the body in ways that are not so attractive when examined in the mirror (and that vary based on your genetic makeup). On top of that, we rarely do our skin any favors during hard times. "That's when you start sleeping less, drinking more, and eating poorly," Grossman notes.

The good news (and don't we all need some good news?): These issues can be addressed. "You do have to destress," says Ranella Hirsch, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Boston University Medical Center, "but you can fake it until you fix it."

ACNE

WHAT'S HAPPENING: "All you have to do is look at a pimple to see what's out of balance," says Hirsch. "The white part is largely oil and dead skin, and the redness is inflammation." Not only does stress cause our sebaceous glands to pump out more of the oil that bacteria thrive on (leading to the clogging and inflammation of a follicle more commonly known as a zit), high cortisol levels also cause the skin to produce inflammatory agents of its own. Plus, many of us apparently find that there's no better way to relieve stress than squeezing and prodding our pores into oblivion. "Picking is the bane of the dermatologist's existence," Hirsch says. "It makes acne much harder to treat, and because it lets more bacteria penetrate the skin, you are far more likely to end up with red or brown marks."