In the United States, rosacea affects 16 million people, and the role that emotional stress plays in this skin condition is fairly significant for nearly everyone in this group.
To shed some light on the connection between emotional stress and rosacea, board-certified dermatologist Dr. Bruce Saal and our team at Los Gatos Dermatology want to focus on the topic here.
As you’re likely all too aware if you’re reading this blog post, rosacea is a chronic skin condition characterized by flare-ups of redness and inflammation in the skin on your face.
What prompts the flare-ups can vary from person to person, but most rosacea sufferers cite the following:
To put some numbers to the last item on our list — emotional stress — the National Rosacea Society (NRS) has conducted periodic surveys that have found:
These numbers certainly underscore that emotional stress can very much influence the frequency with which you experience rosacea flare-ups.
Unfortunately, the connection between rosacea and emotional stress is a two-way street. It makes sense that having such a visible condition can affect how confident you feel around others.
One report that gathered information from nine different studies concluded that the rosacea’s connection to depression and anxiety is significant, even predisposing people to develop depression and anxiety.
The good news is that there are effective ways to reduce your stress levels, which then can reduce your rosacea flare-ups. The NRS found that more than 67% of patients who worked on reducing emotional stress were able to reduce flare-ups.
While emotional stress can come from different places — relationships, health, finances, and more — stress management can work across the board. A few of the more popular stress management techniques include:
Only you know what might work best for you, but you should take the time to actively reduce your stress. Even taking a break for a few minutes during a particularly stressful time to just sit and breathe can be beneficial.
If you’d like some more ideas, click here.
Another way to reduce the emotional stress related to rosacea is to ensure that you have a good dermatology team in your corner that can help you manage this skin condition.
Such a team exists at Los Gatos Dermatology, and all you need to do to get started is to contact our office in Los Gatos, California, to schedule an appointment.
