Stress And Acne

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 490
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It might look slightly odd to put stress and acne together as if this is something new. In fact, everyone who has suffered acne knows all about stress. No matter whether those around us were considered friends or enemies, the appearance of acne converts everyone into a potential enemy to self-confidence. It can be a look that lingers just a little too long, or looks exchanged between people as you pass by, and that's before you start hearing the comments. It would not be so bad if it happened to everyone at the same time. That way everyone would be the same. But some people start young. Others seem to have avoided the problem only to find it coming on years after everyone else has finished. These differences mean there is a steady supply of targets for cruelty. Those who recover the most quickly have the longest time to take their revenge on all those who follow them.

Yet look beyond the obvious connection and there are some very important questions. Suppose there's a real link so that stress of anticipating the arrival of acne encourages it to come. Or that the stress of all the taunting slows down the recovery and makes ...
... the whole problem last longer. If either or both of these links was real, all children and teens would benefit from learning relaxation techniques. Yes, we can all smile and say there would be resistance. But if there was clear medical evidence that stress-busting was a cure for acne, this might encourage your children to be a little more calm and pleasant to live with.

Unfortunately, we now come to a major conflict of interest. There has been no significant research into proving or disproving the link. When you think about it, this is an extraordinary failure. Yet it's easily explained. At present, Big Pharma and the cosmetics industry make several billion dollars a year out of selling drugs and various products to "help" those with acne. If all people had to do to cure acne was to meditate and relax, just think what would happen to all those profits. So we have to be sold the message that it's medically necessary to treat acne as if it was a major disease and spend vast amounts of money on covering up the problem until it goes away.

Perhaps this criticism is unjustified. Perhaps there's no link between stress and acne. But it would be better if there was proper research into proving cause and effect. The only "evidence" comes from a few unscientific tests. For example, one university monitored some twenty students and found they had more obvious acne before and during examinations. Although such findings are interesting, they are scientifically useless. Proper clinical trials require hundreds if not several thousand people for the evidence to be credible. Ironically, the only real scientific evidence comes courtesy of the FDA's approval of Accutane which is proven highly effective in eliminating acne. Yes, there are problems if women of child-bearing age take the drug. Others have unwisely ignored the manufacturer's warnings and have been injured. But millions of people have found Accutane effective. Respect the drug and it's safe.