How to prevent premature ageing

Before considering a visit to the dermatologist, please read our article.

Concerned about hair loss? Tired of being reminded about your premature wrinkles? Constantly having to use self-deprecating humour like “the bags under my eyes are Gucci” to cover up your internal insecurities?

The state of our health is well-acquainted with the effects of stress, especially on our mental health, blood pressure, and our skin and hair to name a few (1, 2). 86 percent of Singaporean students feel stressed. That’s significantly above the global average -- by 20 percent to be exact (3). Stress is decidedly one demon we’re all familiar with. The question is: how do we combat it?

But first we have to understand how pertinent it is that we deal with our stress, and to do that, we must understand exactly how debilitating stress can be.

The negative effects that stress has on our bodies can be demonstrated in two categories; physical and emotional.

We are all familiar with the physical effects that stress has on our bodies, such as nausea, reduced immunity, headaches, and so on. The unsettling familiarity of a tension headache is alarming, as it reflects the frequency of which people experience negative effects of stress and the scale of its impact. In fact, these dreadful and daunting symptoms are only the short-term effects of stress. If one experiences long-term stress with no outlet, they have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, obesity, gastrointestinal diseases, and so on (4). Perhaps the most relevant to students would be the “premature ageing,” with symptoms such as acne, psoriasis, and permanent hair loss. Ring a bell?

The emotional effects of stress on the body is also highly pertinent. Getting agitated over small things, feeling burnt out, thoughts racing in your mind, low self-esteem...we’ve all been there. Coupled with sleep deprivation, which also causes a series of emotional problems, these emotional effects are amplified in students.

Hence, with these effects of stress on the body in mind, let’s dive deeper into the reasons behind stress in students and how to cope with it.

The reason behind academic stress

The Singaporean education system is highly competitive, due to a multitude of factors. The idea of a merit based society has caused parents to place much emphasis on academic merit. With this mindset having been ingrained into most of the older generation, it encourages extremely unhealthy habits. The all too familiar tiger mom, in pushing their children to do their best, sends their children to tuition day after day, even in primary school. The kiasu parent, who buys a truckload of assessment books for their children. From a tender age, children in Singapore are exposed to academic stress, many a times, before they can even comprehend the idea of academic stress.

What are the main problems leading to students feeling academic stress?

Firstly, the fear of failure. It is defined as “an irrational and persistent fear of failing”. You’ve probably either seen, or felt this before in the days leading up to receiving results of an exam. Most probably, you would think that you would not meet the expectation you had set for yourself, and underestimate yourself by a large margin. Most of the time, this results in you telling others that you would probably fail, in order to keep expectations, both of yourself, and of others, low. These are all signs of the fear of failure.

Experienced this before? You are not alone. According to Pisa, 78% of Singaporean students, the most out of any country participating in the survey, fear failure (5).

As mentioned before, the Singaporean education system is highly competitive. There are only so many spots in what people perceive to be top schools afterall. Hence, with so many people having such lofty ambitions, all vying for a limited spot, everyone wants to be better than everyone else. Scoring better gives a feeling of pride, whilst scoring worse gives a feeling of inferiority. Thus, the stress continues to build up, as students give themselves pressure to perform better, so as not to feel a sense of humiliation should they underperform.

How to cope with academic stress

Physiological health plays a big role in how equipped we are to cope with stress. Therefore, researchers have emphasised that students should sleep well at night, eat healthily and exercise regularly (6). Good sleep is contingent on both sufficient duration -- seven to nine hours -- and continuity (7, 8). That means you should be aiming to sleep for a long, continuous period. If you don’t feel refreshed, chances are you may not have had a good sleep (9).

In addition to physiological wellbeing, researchers prescribe the following for psycho-emotional wellbeing: learn to recognize potential stressors and signs of stress; learn about stress management techniques, such as relaxation and problem solving methods; find time to rest and relax; be optimistic; build resilience. Other significant recommendations include getting organized and following a schedule, refraining from overscheduling and setting realistic goals for oneself (6).

Being conscious of the aforementioned symptoms of stress can help you identify when you need to bust out one of those stress management or problem solving strategies. Now, onto more concrete steps to carry out the above recommendations.

Get organized! Researchers and laymen alike have emphasised the importance of this aforementioned strategy (6) (10). Organize your materials, including your notes, worksheets, etcetera. Identify all the tasks you have to complete and when they’re due. It helps to have a system to record this. Consider using a planner or excel sheet.

Avoid procrastinating and catch up (11) (10). It’s extremely important to finish overdue work as soon as possible, or you’ll find yourself lagging farther and farther behind. It’s best to avoid procrastinating in general.

Evaluate the importance of a work item and set a schedule (12). Collect a list of all your work items. Split them into four categories: work that is important and urgent, like things due today or tomorrow or emergencies; work that is important but not urgent, like studying in advance or long-term projects; work that is unimportant but urgent, like social appointments; work that is unimportant and not urgent. Spend the most time on the first two. Some recommend starting on the most important and most time-consuming tasks first.

One way to integrate all of these would be through the Pomodoro Method, which is a system of completing tasks in a session consisting of 25-minute uninterrupted “Work” followed by 5-minute “Rest” -- a Pomodoro (13). It contains five phases. First, planning; this should take place at the start of the day or set of activities, with the purpose of outlining what needs to be done according to their level of priority. Second, tracking -- “collecting data about effort expended and other metrics of interest”. Third and fourth -- recording and processing; this primarily involves taking note of how many Pomodoros it takes to finish a task and the problems faced, but it can include the nature of the task (worksheet, revision, project). Fifth, improving; determine whether you can shorten the number of Pomodoros for a single task, re-evaluate the usefulness of a task and how you can reorganize tasks to be more effective in your work.

The reason we experience social stress

Beyond the anxieties that stem from our challenging education system, most of us find that we also face stress in our personal lives. This can emerge from obstacles faced within our relationships, or our general social environment.

Undoubtedly, social media is an integral part of most of our lives, making up most of the social environment that we surround ourselves in— and so, for many of us, social stress comes from our habitual usage of social media. This may come as a huge shock to you, considering that scrolling through your Instagram feed may seem to be the only activity that's keeping you sane in the midst of all that hustle. However, social media is often the silent killer when it comes to our mental health.

Rather than serving its intended role — to allow us to stay connected with others even across distance, frequent engagement with social media can actually make you feel more lonely and isolated. A study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found a correlation between social media usage and feelings of social isolation (14). You may think that social media hasn’t yet affected you in this aspect, but trust me, it certainly has. Recall the last time you felt that all-consuming "FOMO" feeling for not being invited to that birthday party? Or that holiday season when all your friends seemed to be travelling but you were just stuck at home? Being invited to a sneak peak into the lives of others may be intriguing, but the "FOMO" that often comes with it can invoke loneliness and inadequacy when we start feeling left out, and that others are leading more fulfilling lives than us.

Another common form of stress I’m sure we’ve all experienced in some part of our lives would be insecurities about our body image. In fact, the Adephi Psych Medical Clinic found that eating disorders are amongst the top mental health issues amongst children and teenages in Singapore (15). This though, is no surprise, considering the culture of fat-shaming in our traditional Asian society, which brings about the stigma of being, or looking even the slightest bit overweight. Don’t you dread the line “You look chubbier and rounder” coming from that pesky aunt at your Chinese New Year reunion dinner? Unfortunately, these body image insecurities are exacerbated by our frequent usage of social media. Social media has the tendency to project ‘ideal’ and unrealistic body types, from male celebrities with “washboard abs” to female influencers with “hourglass figures”. This perpetuates unhealthy stereotypes of what the ideal body type should look like, and can leave us feeling dissatisfied with our own bodies. Being insecure about our body image certainly brings us tremendous levels of anxiety, causing us to stress over the calories in the food we eat, whether we’re working out sufficiently, and so on and so forth.

Dealing with social stress

With social media directly playing into our social stress, one obvious method of alleviating social stress would definitely be to control our usage of social media. Other than other positive effects such as reducing pressure on our eyes or … probably having more time for studies, being able to stand against the allures of the Internet has multifaceted effects.

“Logging off” your Instagram and Facebook would foremost reduce your exposure to unhealthy online trends such as body stereotypes as well as “perfect lives”. WIth the courage of logging off thus provides one with a breather from all the unconscious societal stress. Even as some claim that such societal stresses are not that deleterious, subtle actions such as editing the photos that we post online (which 64% admitted to in a recent survey) reveal that we are too susceptible to the pressures of social media (16). Eventually, we would metaphorically explode after being in such an omnipresent high-pressure cooker - a break we definitely need.

Ok so - completely logging off social media isn’t your cup of tea, or perhaps achievable in the short run, which is completely fine! Instead, perhaps turn that “FYP (For You Page)” of yours into something that will actually motivate you rather than make you feel down.

In the 2017 Wall Street Journal “Blue Feed, Red Feed” news experiment (17), it displayed side-by-side the starkly different Facebook feeds from liberal and conservative news sources. While our TikTok FYPs are not of the political persuasion, a similarity can be drawn that social media can often be an echo chamber - if one chooses to continue looking at unhealthy posts that make them feel worse, such an occurrence will only grow in severity given the curative aspect of social media.

Conversely, one can directly take action on correcting such toxic feeds to begin with, be it choosing to actively seek out accounts that are wholesome and motivational (to mix with your current preferred social media feed). In addition, don’t just stay there alone! Do also consider using social media as a method to connect with people who have similar interests as you (18). Social media can thus grow past its negative aspects of making you feel inferior but rather helping you actively grow as a person.

If we are able to prioritise and view social media as a platform for us to actively grow, we will probably be able to feel much better on the Internet and prevent hair loss in any kind too.

Conclusion

Ultimately, stress is a part of all of our lives and it can be detrimental to our physical, emotional and psychological health. Assuming we don’t want to run ourselves into ruin, it is therefore important that we learn how to cope with and overcome stress in a way that is healthy. Learning how to manage stress will (probably) change us for the better. Not to mention save your wallets from visits to your local dermatologist -- and isn’t that a relief?

Written by: Clara Cher, Curtis Neo, Davina Sitoh, Jace Bong, and Kassendra Lok Yixuan

Bibliography

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