Caroline Cavanagh explains how stress triggers hormonal changes and sweating that worsen acne and dermatitis. She critiques commercial creams with parabens and recommends natural alternatives, then announces a 24-day advent calendar of stress-reduction videos to improve skin health during the holidays.
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Hi, my name's Caroline Cavanagh and I am delighted to be working with Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust and my trusty sunflower cream. Now I work as an anxiety specialist. Now straight away you might be asking yourself, what on earth has anxiety got to do with skincare? So let me answer that one straight away. Your skin is the biggest organ in your body. It is also the barrier between what's going on inside of our bodies and the external environment and is a fantastic indicator if there is a discomfort in either one of those areas. So let me give you some examples. Let's focus initially on what's going on inside of us. So your skin contains our bodies. It's the outside surface of all of the chemical interactions, all of the physiology that's going on inside of us. If we were to take some of the emotions like anger, embarrassment, you often know people are struggling with those emotions because of what's going on in the skin tone. They redden, there is a change. If we're hot, our skin will react, will release water to then cool us off. If we're cold, hair follicles will rise to add as an insulation level. If there is jaundice to the skin, again, there's indication that there is disease going on inside of the body. So a lot of the medical profession will be looking at the tone, the pallor, the quality of the skin as an indicator of how the body inside is. On the outside, there's obviously extremes of weather. It's a beautiful day outside as I look out the window now, but by good grief, it's cold. So those extremes of temperature, equally the sun, will affect the skin tone. Pollution, we all know all the free radicals that we're exposed to will have an impact on the quality of the skin. And also germs, it's our greatest barrier between all the viruses and diseases and bacteria that's in the air all of the time. So skin is really, really important. And 2 of our things that we probably focus most on, hands and our face, are the things that are most exposed to that external environment, and therefore the greatest indicators of how the body is dealing both internally and externally to our world that we're living in. So let me talk about, a bit about my world, about anxiety and the clients that I deal with. Anxiety is effectively chemical changes that are going on inside of the body. When you start to feel fear, which is what anxiety is, lots happen inside the body to prepare you to either run away or fight What's scaring you? Now I do quite a lot of public speaking, and even with all the experience, I will normally feel before I'm due to go on stage, my heart rate rises a little bit, I might get sweaty palms. But you know, I'm quite pleased with that because those chemical reactions are releasing things into my body that will allow me to up my game. And I usually become aware 2-3 minutes into it, I calm down, my palms dry up, I breathe more naturally, my heart rate goes down, so that's good. However, if what you're scared of is something that you can't then walk away from— it might be money worries, it might be sickness in the family, it might be a problem at work— then your body can't tell the difference with that. It still knows that you're anxious about something, so it's preparing the body constantly to run away, fight, run away, fight, but it can't. And those chemical changes over a period of time will start to have a physiological impact. And for a lot of my clients, that impact is affected by the disease. Now, a lot of doctors will also see that skin conditions, dermatitis, acne, a lot of the others have a causal relationship with stress and anxiety. So this is where these two, myself and the Sunflower Cream, Start now to build a relationship. This time of year, let's look externally, it's cold. We also come in and we have central heating, both of which have an impact on drying out the skin. If the skin starts to suffer, we worry about how we look, and a natural reaction obviously is to put something on your skin to nourish it. Now, before I had children, I was always quite aware of what I was eating because what we put in our body again has a big indicator on the health of our skin, but I never really bothered that much about what was in some of the creams that I used in things like cold weather or suntan cream until I had children. And so if you're a parent yourself, mum perhaps, I'm sure that perhaps you can empathise that when you have children you become a little bit more aware of some of these lotions and potions that we readily use. And I was utterly horrified at household names that I'd come to trust when I looked at the ingredients of creams, the rubbish that was in them, the chemicals, the parabens, and doing a bit of good old Google research, really shocked at some of the side effects that these things can have in the long term. So having creams such as this that are completely natural can remove some of those anxieties to make sure that you know you are doing the best for your children, for your family. But things do go wrong. Stress does happen. The weather happens, obviously. And so sometimes the skin does break down, it does start to have problems. And so what I'm doing with the NHS Trust throughout the month of December is bringing to you an advent calendar that you've never seen before. It's completely unique. I'm going to be bringing you each day of the 24 days up to advent A short tip through a video on something that you can do to reduce stress, to reduce anxiety, and therefore to help your skin. They're going to be very practical tips. Each one on their own is not going to make a huge amount of difference, but you build them up together, they'll make a phenomenal difference, not only on your skin tone, your skin quality, but on your quality of life as well. And alongside that, we're going to be offering at the end, because it is Christmas after all, a prize to one lucky person, which we will talk about as we get closer to that, to that wonderful Christmas Day that I'm sure we're all very much looking forward to. So thank you for listening. I really much look forward to sharing some of these tips with you, so please come back. The tips are going to be available on mytrustyskincare.co.uk. There'll be the video clip each day, there'll be a longer blog that you can read if you're interested in having more detail, There'll be some links to where you can buy the cream. There'll also be links to my own website if you want to understand and learn a bit more about anxiety in itself. So lots out there, it's a stressful time, it's cold, there's an awful lot going on, so let's make sure that you hit Christmas with the skin in the best condition it can possibly be. So I look forward to talking to you again very soon. Bye-bye now.
