The effects of stress and fast food on facial complexion.
(This article is based on my shallow knowledge of the stress response and shouldn’t be taken to the a true scientific fact. In fact this is just my hypothesis)

Over the past few months, I’ve been going through a lot of stress and at the same time eating fast food at least 3 meals per week. (This usually happens at the end of the week, so essentially it would be 3 meals of fast food like burgers or pizza in back to back days). I usually have lunch at some fast food chain on Thursday, then dinner would be a takeaway from a fast food chain as well, and end it on Friday by going out for lunch with my friends at a fast food chain. That’s just the minimum, sometimes on the weekends; I sometimes take fast food as well. Fast food is low on vitamins and high on sodium and unsaturated fats.

The past few months have been probably 1 of the most stressful periods of my life. For some reason, I’ve been stressing about ‘stuff’ which if you look at it from a third party’s perspective, its really nothing. But when I’m down, I’m really down, like really really down, but when I’m feeling good its really really good. But anyway, 1 of the things Humanbio 142 thought me was that the body releases specific hormones during stressful situations (Cortisol, Norepinephrine and Epinephrine). A stressor will stimulate the hypothalamus to release CRH (Corticotrophin Releasing Hormone) and that travels down to the anterior pituitary via the hypophyseal portal vein. CRH then stimulates the pituitary to release ACTH (Adrenocorticotropic Hormone). ACTH then travels through the blood vessels and eventually ends up in the adrenal glands. Here, it stimulates the adrenal cortex to release cortisol. Some of the effects of cortisol are breaking down of glycogen/fatty acids to glucose, gluconeogenesis, protein catabolism, immune depression, an increased resistance to stress and a decreased inflammatory response.So how do these factors tie up with facial complexion? Well I think that the high levels of cortisol in my blood when I’m stressed out depresses my immune system, hence when a pimple forms, my immune system cannot flush out the bacteria quickly enough. Soon more and more pimple forms and the face become scarred. Add the fast food to this, a low vitamin diet (vitamin C especially which is good for skin repair) means that my skin cells don’t have the supplies to heal those scars fast enough. Therefore, the end result is bad facial complexion. To try to verify this article, I’ll stop stressing (after the exams) and eat healthier foods. If my face complexion improves, then I can convince myself that my hypothesis is true.

However, since this is an observational study, it cannot reliably establish causation, so I cannot say that too much fast food and stress causes bad facial complexion. There are too many unknown variables that have yet to be accounted for (air cleanliness, hygiene etc).