How Our Moods and Emotions Affect Us

Do our emotions or our mood have effects on our skin? Well the answer is yes!, there are hormonal and neurochemical(chemical processes that occur in the nervous system or nerve tissue) reactions our bodies have to our emotions that affect our skin.

                          When you’re happy or joyous or excited because your delivery is on the way, these emotions encourage reactions in your body that reduce skin inflammation and increase blood flow. When you have a smile on your face or you’re in a good mood your skin radiates that, that’s not to say that just cause you’re happy you’ll have great skin, you still need to take care of your skin but it sure helps to be in a positive mental state and love your skin regardless. Now asides our skin, emotions affect our body as a whole too, ever heard of happy weight? happy weight is an informal term that people use to describe weight gained during a period mostly characterized by joy, happiness, peace etc. Someone in a healthy, happy relationship could refer to the weight gained during that period as “happy weight”, simply attributing their weight gain to the good/happy state of mind they were or are in during the relationship. Another instance could simply be some who is just happy with life at the moment, how its going and where they are in life. “Happy weight” doesn’t necessarily translate to good weight, sometimes “happy weight” may need to be lost depending on your personal weight preference.

Just as positive emotions have a positive effect on your skin/body, so do negative moods and emotions. When you’re stressed, anxious, unhappy, rest deprived depressed or even upset, it takes a toll on your body. Stress will cause you to breakout, lack of sleep and rest will cause you to appear a bit pale sometimes and have eye bags or dark eye circles, frowning constantly can also cause wrinkles. Being stressed can cause you to engage in “stress eating” which causes you to eat more than needed when you’re stressed and in the long run is unhealthy for you, high levels of stress also lead to an increase in cortisol levels. Cortisol has been linked to everything from insomnia to inflammatory skin issues like acne. Daily habits such as a healthy diet and plenty of sleep promote healthy skin, But people with depression may have trouble eating healthfully or getting sufficient sleep, depression can cause lack of appetite, resulting in starving yourself and depriving your body of the nutrients it needs to function properly and fight off diseases, in general it strips you of your ability to completely and properly care for yourself as you may not be able to tend to your regular self and body care habits. Although sometimes these moods and emotions are out of our control they still affect us negatively.

The long and short of it all is that if you’re in a positive mental state you’ll be able to better cater to your body and your body itself likewise would be able to function more effectively, but if you’re in a negative mental space, finding the

will power to take care of yourself would be hard and your body will not be able to function at its best.

Like Timanya said in his song “this life I can’t kill myself ohh…” you can’t kill yourself really and truly, learn to love yourself and find joy in simple things, we all have different things going on but don’t let it all be at the cost of your health or self-care.