Does your face look a little older lately? If not, how good for you. If so, there are reasons.
"One reason is because of the perception of what I call the 'face of Zoom,'" Dr. Rajani Katta, author of "Glow: The Dermatologist's Guide to a Whole Foods Younger Skin Diet."
However, unfortunately, the skin can also suffer from the effects of a disturbing pandemic year, said Dr. Whitney Bowe, professor of clinical dermatology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
"A patient I had known for a long time came and said to me, 'I have lost my parent and I feel like I have aged many years in just one year.' "When I see patients, I can see that there is actually a physical damage, and from a biological mechanism I understand how this works. I call it aging from stress." - Bowe told CNN.
Another professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California and sleep specialist, Dr. Raj Dasgupta, said that "stress affects our ability to sleep and stay asleep, which can also damage the skin."
He showed that in a 2010 study on the effects of sleep on facial features, he found that "people who did not sleep well had swollen eyelids and dark circles under the eyes and looked like they had more wrinkles."
Chronic pressure means increasing stress hormone levels, inhibiting the production of collagen and hyaluronic acid in the skin, Bowe explained.
"Collagen is the scaffold of the skin that prevents fine lines and wrinkles, and hyaluronic acid keeps skin healthy, so losing these can really affect your appearance."
In addition, stress can cause problems with the proper functioning of the skin barrier, causing dehydration, dryness and the formation of wrinkles.
