Sometimes just a nothing, a look a little support, a word too that suddenly you get in the red cheeks and revealing look at the other lower your emotions. And as if our moods affect our skin, psoriasis, herpes, eczema and even warts are more commonly attributed to stress. And conversely cutaneous defects we may undermine morale.
Do we not say that teenagers are “ill at ease” in this pivotal age where we dream of becoming an adult as far as we apprehend leaving childhood. An age where the buttons are more likely than boys and invite without warning in the newspaper. It is said to have “nerves on edge” when angry, upset, the situation seems to elude us?
And if the skin was “the mirror of the soul”?
Instrument of seduction and communication, the skin is not a “big bag” which is packed all our body, but an organ very responsive and sophisticated. Recent studies have shown that in the skin, nervous system and immune system are intimately linked both anatomically and physiologically through a system called “neuro-immuno-cutaneous”. Researchers are trying to measure the impact of this system on the physiology and diseases of the skin and understand how psychological problems may have a bearing skin.
According to Jean Paul Ortonne, research director at Inserm and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Nice “stress and mental status plays an important role in virtually all skin conditions”.
But some skin diseases are so difficult to live that one wonders that stress or skin disease is the trigger. Indeed, many skin diseases unsightly, painful inevitably has an impact on the mind.
Stress on edge
Although this seems obvious to many patients, how our minds can affect our skin? Suffering from seborrheic dermatitis, a condition that affects an estimated 6 million people in France, 95% patients consider stress as the main factor favoring the onset and relapses. As stated by Professor Ortonne, if the mechanisms responsible for this dermatosis are not yet fully explained, this condition could be caused by the proliferation of a yeast microscopic living has always been on our body, called Malassezia furfur. This is nourrirrait the excess sebum produced by sebaceous glands.
What then compared with the stress? Our mental state changes the composition of sebum, which would become more palatable to the fungus and thus increase its multiplication. This proliferation would make more aggressive towards the skin and our immune system defend itself then, which would produce redness and peeling fit for seborrheic dermatitis.
Skin more than any other organ therefore reflect our personal life. Dermatologists and psychologists should not delay work regularly together.