Making Relaxation an Essential Part of Your Beauty Routine

If you want to stay as youthful and attractive as possible – and who doesn’t – then you need to pay attention to all the external influences that can affect your appearance. You probably know that absorbing high levels of ultraviolet radiation from being in the sun too long can prematurely age your skin, but have you considered the effect that stress, worry and anxiety can have on your body? There aren’t many people who don’t have a fair degree of stress in their lives, and continually feeling under pressure, anxious, or worried can take its toll on your health, and become another cause of premature aging.

Why stress affects your skin
The stress reaction, and its variants like worry and anxiety, result from the brain feeling that you could be in a threatening situation. To prepare your body for the fight or flight response that protects you if you are in physical danger, the brain releases the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline into your bloodstream. These chemicals heighten your awareness and give you extra strength, speed and response times, which are essential if you need to escape a physical threat. Our lives are not often threatened in this way anymore, but the same chemicals are released even when the threat is psychological rather than physical, so if you are leading a life that exposes you regularly to mental pressures, your system will be subjected to high levels of stress hormones on a chronic basis. This constant exposure leads to biological changes in the body, and results in the cells starting to break down.

Signs of premature aging
If you are experiencing chronic stress your skin will start to suffer, becoming thinner, drier, and more prone to spots and flaws. The spread of wrinkles and lines in the skin is accelerated, leading to crow’s feet around the eyes and grooving of the skin. The musculature beneath the skin also starts to lose its tone, so your skin and flesh begin to sag and lose the firmness of youth and good health. These changes are inevitable as you age, but if they are affecting you in your early and middle years, you’ll find you look older than you are, which is the opposite of what most women strive for.

Beating stress
To tackle chronic stress and prevent the harmful effects, you need to find a method of relaxing and switching off every day. There are a number of different ways of achieving this, so it’s just a question of finding a method that suits you. Try to avoid relying on alcohol or caffeine, which may help in the moment, but which will make things worse in the long run. You could try vaping as an alternative – you can read more here if you aren’t familiar with this activity. Meditation, physical exercise, and enjoying a good book or a movie are the most popular ways of kicking back, or for some people the diversion of extreme sports or learning something new can be effective ways to beat stress.

When you find what works for you, stick with it and make time for it each day, and don’t let stress rob you of your beauty.