We’re all aware that stress has many harmful effects, such as high blood pressure, anxiety, stomach pain and insomnia. Yet, did you know that it might change your physical appearance? You may have seen videos on your feed of influencers pointing to their cheeks, or foreheads to showcase what the internet has termed “cortisol face”.
An article by Carina Toledo defines cortisol as the primary hormone produced by our adrenal glands during times of stress. Toledo notes that there is some debate over whether the symptoms that influencers showcase online are from elevated cortisol, or something else.
There are multiple facets of life affected with high stress. The first one is biological age. This does not mean your literal age, but “the impact that lifestyle, nutrition, genetics, and various illnesses have on your body and vital organs,” Toledo writes. What’s fascinating is that your biological age might be lower or higher than your chronological age. This all depends on the health of your internal system. Really makes you want to take better care of your body right? This stress is not just related to psychological, but physical stress too, such as a big surgery or giving birth.
Biological age is not a fixed number though, and we have the ability to shape it based on our choices, or other factors. For example, the stress your body endures through childbirth does not change your biological age permanently. This also goes for large surgeries, where biological age returns to normal after recovery time.
As mentioned earlier, stress can have an impact on physical appearance. Some face changes you can expect with elevated cortisol levels are a puffy face, dark eye circles, drooping skin, acne, uneven complexion, or more gray hairs. “When cortisol is elevated, nonessential functions such as digestion and metabolism are slowed down, which, in cases of chronic stress, can lead to metabolic issues and weight gain,” Toledo writes. Going hand in hand with this is an increase in food cravings, leading to binge eating. It’s important to note that cortisol does not change your face shape itself, but when elevated it can cause water and sodium retention, leading to a puffy face.
Chronically elevated cortisol can also affect our immune systems by increasing the risk of infection and inflammation. An article by the American Psychological Association describes a study done to measure the effects of stress on the human immune system. An overlap of findings showed that firstly, stress does impact immunity, and secondly, “short-term stress actually ‘revs up’ the immune system, an adaptive response preparing for injury or infection, but long-term or chronic stress causes too much wear and tear, and the system breaks down,” (2004).
For ways of mitigating stress, let’s go back to Toledo, who provides some helpful and simple tips. These include: skipping processed foods, getting eight hours of sleep nightly, drinking enough water, minimizing caffeine intake, and focusing on low-impact exercises. These can prove helpful in deflating those high cortisol levels, and returning to a sense of normalcy.
For some, high stress is momentary, coming during events such as planning a wedding or prepping for a final exam. For others it’s constant, causing serious health problems. If that’s you, I recommend reaching out to professional help such as a licensed therapist who can provide you with resources for managing stress or anxiety. Just know that it is manageable, and there’s a multitude of ways to lessen the impacts of stress.
