This Wednesday 3rd November marks National Stress Awareness Day, which aims to raise awareness of the different ways stress can affect us. During the pandemic, this topic has become even more prevalent in light of stressful news agendas and the steady return to normality over the past year. Both factors have increased our stress levels, with research from Mental Health UK revealing 74% of people said stress has made them feel overwhelmed. However, while stress manifests in many different ways – whether it be emotionally or physiologically – our skin often shows the visible signs, ranging from acne to premature wrinkles.

While stress affects everyone differently, navigating the first winter out of lockdown is another factor that the nation will face this year. Many of us will notice that changes in the weather and our external environment will have seismic implications on our skin, with research from Uvence – a naturally based cosmetic treatment that utilises one’s own cells for skin rejuvenation – showing that 22% of Brits feel that the winter months cause them to look five years older. As we move from autumn into winter, this creates fluctuations in temperature and humidity, causing the air to become cooler and drier, which means our skin loses its moisture. High-speed winds and low temperatures can also cause the skin to become dry and sometimes irritated.

In light of the combination of high stress levels and the changing seasons, it is understandable that many of us will be taking pre-emptive steps to combat the impact of winter on our skin using nonsurgical cosmetic treatments, particularly as 45% of Brits think the winter weather makes their skin less able to recover from damage, Uvence cosmetics reveals.

Dr Olivier Amar, leading cosmetic surgeon and CMO of Uvence, discusses the impact of stress on the skin, and how our skin concerns shift according to changing external environments:

“Practitioners across the nation, including myself, have witnessed a significant uptick in the number of people seeking cosmetic treatments since the beginning of the pandemic. Most of the nation have experienced feelings of stress during the last 20 months, and this has the potential to have adverse effects on the quality of our skin – ranging from acne, to rashes, dry skin, and premature wrinkles. Feelings of stress over a long period of time can also heighten skin related issues.

Every patient’s skin is different, and stress affects our bodies in different ways, which is why I offer bespoke plans tailored to each individual. This year, feelings of stress come in tandem with seasonal change, which often catalyses an array of skin related concerns in normal circumstances alone. Whether it be short-term effects such as dullness, or those that are longer-term such as signs of ageing, my patients often ask what nonsurgical treatments are available to combat the issues they experience with their skin in retrospect. Other patients take a pre-emptive approach, and act before they experience any noticeable change.

Now, patients often look for naturally based answers to their skin concerns. Uvence is one example of a regenerative treatment, which cryogenically preserves purified extracts of a patient’s own fat tissue for reinjection in the form of a ‘biofiller’. In other words, although our bodies are naturally equipped with the resources needed to slow the ageing process, it doesn’t always have enough of them to be effective. Taking fat cells from other areas of the body, such as the stomach, and redistributing them to areas that are in need of rejuvenation therefore maximises the body’s natural ability to slow ageing.”