My Top 3 Stress Busting Tips To Help Improve Your Psoriasis

Stress. One word with so much weight. I believe that stress is a huge driver of rashes and skin diseases. Not only can it make your psoriasis worse, but it can also be a cause. Psoriasis is a disease of inflammation and stress increases inflammation. When we are in a state of stress, it decreases how well our gut functions and decreases our immune system function. Both our gut and immune system are closely tied to our skin health.

Stress also affects our hormones and causes increased cortisol, which in turn affects our skin and has many other downstream consequences.

Many people either think stress is normal and there is no way around it or don't even realize that they are stressed. Stress effects can look different for everyone. Do any of the following sound familiar?

• Feel wound up, even when tired, and have trouble calming down?
• Feel burned out or exhausted, even when others see you as energetic and driven?
• Feel restless, agitated, anxious, and uneasy?
• Emotional?
• Heart palpitations?
• Sleep less than 7 hours a night?
• Have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep?
• So busy that you forget to eat?
• Feeling like you are going to explode?
• Feeling pressured?
• Worrying?

If you identify with any of these, you will want to continue reading.

Ideally, we would just remove everything from our life that causes us stress. I wish we could just eliminate all stressors- situational, emotional, and physical, but that is just unrealistic. What we can do is lower the effects of stress so we can lower the inflammation in our body and our skin. Think of your body like a vase. You can only pour so much water into it before it overflows. The same is true with stress and our body. We need to do activities that will help remove some of the water from our vase.

It is important to find a stress-reducing activity that you enjoy, that works for you, and that you can easily do every day.

It doesn’t have to be long, just even start for a few minutes each day. Make it a part of your daily routine.

For me, I do my devotions and affirmations first thing in the morning so that I make it a priority and it doesn’t get put off as the day gets busy. If there are other times throughout the day to squeeze some time in for other activities, then I add more (like singing in the car 😄).

Check out below 3 Stress Busting Tips that you can EASILY add to your day.

My first stress-busting tip is to incorporate visualization into your stress-reducing strategy.

Sit comfortably in a quiet place and visualize yourself with clear skin and a healthy body, what do you look like, how does it feel, what are you able to do that you don’t do now… the more specific the better, use as many of your senses as you can.

At first this may be difficult, but the more you do it, the more vivid the visualization will become.

By doing this, it helps rewire your brain to help achieve the results you are visualizing. Other benefits are controlling heart rate and blood pressure, lowering pain, fear, and anxiety, and more.

My second tip is to listen to music. No intense or screaming music, but music that is calming and makes you happy.

By listening to music, it can decrease cortisol levels up to 60% both before and during periods of stress. Increased cortisol affects our skin and health negatively. Added bonus points to your health when singing along! Singing helps the vagus nerve.

My third and final tip is to try out journaling. You don’t have to write a book, it can be as simple as jotting down what happened that day OR what you want to happen that day, things you are grateful for, goals you have, your feelings, or anything really.

Some of the benefits that are shown to come from journaling include: feeling calmer and happier, increased immune function, improved sleep, decreased pain, fatigue, stress, and blood pressure. 

Stress needs to be addressed. Obviously, try to remove as many sources of it from your life as you can. In the meantime, focus on those EASY options to incorporate into your day! What are you excited about starting?

For more skin-saving tips check out my FREE eBook "The 3 Day Jumpstart to Loving Your Skin." Click the image below.