AP test season is already difficult, but as a junior in high school preparing for the ACT, this time of year feels even more overwhelming. Lately, my days have been taken over by geometric sequences, cellular respiration, and analyzing poetry, leaving minimal room for personal time. Sometimes it feels like all I do is schoolwork. Constantly taking ACT practice tests and staying up late to cram for math and english exams is extremely taxing. Recently, I woke up and noticed my face looked more inflamed than usual. I questioned if this could be a result of all the stress I am under, but I thought I was handling everything pretty well. 

Our body’s responses to stress are designed to keep internal balance. Being faced with anything that causes anxiety or stress, like schoolwork, tensions with friends, or even a physical threat, begins the stress response. First, the fight or flight response releases stress hormones like cortisol into your bloodstream. Your heart rate and blood pressure increase to give more oxygen to your muscles. This also makes your senses become sharper to improve focus and reaction time. Then, your body sends glucose into your bloodstream for fast-acting energy. The relationship between stress and performance is usually described as an upside down “U” curve. This means that there is a certain amount of stress that is actually beneficial and will maximize your performance, but will decrease too much or too little stress. 

Lately, you have probably seen wellness influencers blaming cortisol for all kinds of things: bloating, feeling tired, being irritable, or “cortisol face,” where your face looks puffy. However, unless you are taking extremely high levels of steroid hormones, which can cause something called Cushing’s syndrome (which only affects 40 to 70 people out of a million), cortisol probably isn’t the real cause. Cushing’s usually shows up when your adrenal glands make way too much cortisol, or you’re on a high dose of steroid medicine. For most people, a puffy face comes from everyday things, like not getting enough sleep, eating salty foods, getting dehydrated, allergies, or normal hormonal changes. Calling any puffiness “cortisol face” just oversimplifies what’s really going on and ignores all the other common reasons your face might look different.

Overall, cortisol is not a harmful hormone, especially when you learn to manage stress and anxiety. You can take control over these difficult emotions in many different ways. Personally, it took me quite some time to figure out which method worked the best for me. My favorite way to manage stress, especially when I have many tasks to complete and feel like shutting down, is meditation. I usually find a quiet place, sit comfortably, and focus on my breathing, slowly inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. When my mind starts to wander to everything I have to do, I bring my attention back to my breath. Even just a few minutes of this helps me reset to a calmer mindset. Occasionally, I do yoga, which is a more active version of meditation. Most yoga focuses on similar ideas of meditation, but adds new elements like stretching and a low-impact workout. Other methods to try are mindfulness, relaxation, music, or even hugging a tree—whatever lowers your stress is worth a shot.

References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-019-0228-0

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453023003931

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2470547019833647

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453023003931