What Your Skin Says About Your Psychological Health

First impressions happen in seconds. The moment you see someone new, you make quick, subconscious judgements about them, and that shapes what you think about them. Basically, you judge the book by its cover.

There’s a reason we do this, however — evolutionarily speaking, it would have been very important for our ancestors to be able to judge the healthy from the unhealthy, the threatening from the friendly, the good from the bad. In our mission to protect our genes into the future, fast and accurate judgements of people would provide us with an important skill.

So, despite people telling us not to judge a book by its cover, turns out there can be enough reason to do so. Now, there’s even more, and a new study has found that your skin may reflect your psychological health:

“The skin is the most noticeable part of our body that could be impacted by psychological factors,” Kristina G. Gorbatenko-Roth, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, told the APA. “It’s classic health psychology, just in a different area.” Who knows ? someday, perhaps it’ll become common for a teenager to have her acne treated with some kind of topical cream as well as hypnosis, and maybe a support group, too.

Our skin is affected by things such as stress, anxiety, and depression. Putting in some effort to relieve mental tension and forge a healthy mind seems to have drastic effects on the view from the outside. Head over to Huffington Post for more information and a link to the study.