How Stress Causes Acne

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Creative Commons License photo credit: Ana Santos

If you are trying to find information on how to cure acne fast, one of the most common pieces of advice you will find is to try to remove stress from your life. But why does stress actually cause acne? There’s actually several reasons. First, stress causes your adrenal gland to produce more testosterone. One of the effects of testosterone is to cause the sebaceous glands all over your body to make more sebum, excesses of which are one of the main causes of acne. Stress also decreases the effectiveness of your immune system, meaning that the bacteria that cause acne are not fought off as effectively. Finally, you body also overproduces a steroid called cortisol, which like testosterone causes the glands in your skin to produce more oil. All of this combines to cause acne in stressed people.

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