A BEAUTIFUL MIND - ARTICLE BY ELLE.COM
Chronic stress can cause wrinkles, hair loss, and other signs of premature aging. Some doctors now believe that changing your attitude may offer a powerful antidote. Elizabeth Lamont asks, Can you think yourself pretty?
It's no secret that stress wreaks havoc on the heart and delivers a hefty punch to your looks, too. Unchecked, it spikes cortisol, causes inflammation, and increases cellular oxidation, all of which contribute to wrinkles, sagging skin, and gray hair. As researchers continue to mine the relationship between stress and the signs of aging, one can't help but wonder: If mental strain is so devastating to our appearance, could the opposite be true? Could positive thinking make us visibly younger and more beautiful?
Some doctors say yes. Psychodermatology, a burgeoning field of cosmetic medicine that blends dermatology with psychology, is based on the premise that body and mind are inextricably linked—if you're happy, your skin is happy. Psychodermatologists supplement standard skin-care treatments with hypnosis, meditation, and yoga, as well as anxiety or antidepressant medications. Think optimistically, they say, believe in the creams you're slathering on your skin and the antioxidant pills you're popping, and you may be able to slow down the rate at which you age more effectively than the skeptics among us.
THOUGHT PROCESS
The notion of wishing yourself prettier (and healthier) isn't new. For clearer skin, say two Our Fathers and two Hail Marys, advised twelfth-century German mystic Hildegarde; and in the 1948 beauty book , Edith Carter wrote, “Praying to be more pleasing to people's eyes...is God's will.” In the recently released Peculiar Beauty: Three Centuries of Charmingly Absurd Advice (Carroll & Graf), author Bonnie Downing devotes a chapter, “Magical Thinking,” to a subject popularized by beauty gurus who endorsed self-hypnosis, prayer, and sheer willpower as key practices in any woman's beauty routine. According to Downing, “A great deal of power was placed not on doctors and expensive creams but on individual will.”
Compelling scientific evidence suggests that if you believe a medication or treatment will work, it actually might. The placebo effect has long thwarted the logic of Western medicine by proving that hope often produces better results than drugs. In cosmetic testing, subjects given a placebo—but told that they may receive an active medication—reap some of the same benefits (smoother skin, plumped-up lines, diminished acne) as those using the actual product. Some of the improvement seen in the skin of control-group test subjects could be due to the boost in circulation received from the application of any lotion, says Lauren Thaman Hodges, the director of Procter & Gamble Beauty Science. “The process of applying even an inert cream will get the blood flowing, providing a short-term glow,” she says. “Plus, the element of expectation is a potential catalyst for actual physical results. The mind is definitely involved, and believing in a product will absolutely make a difference.”
Such a remarkable difference, in fact, that the practice of psychodermatology may reshape the way we fight aging in the next decade. Psychological treatments for skin disorders are not new. For decades, dermatologists have referred patients with chronic inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and eczema to psychiatrists. And recently the practice of psychodermatology has been reaffirmed with clinical studies. At the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, a professor of preventive and behavioral medicine, found that psoriasis patients undergoing phototherapy while listening to antistress meditation tapes healed almost four times faster than those who took their treatments in silence.