Does my skin reveal my fears?

40 % biological and 60% psychological

Our skin is 2 square metres of sensitive surface that reflect, between redness and paleness, our feelings, our sensations and even our health. To what extent? For a long time underestimated, the interactions psyches-skins are highlighted increasingly by studies conducted by dermatologists on our nerve cells.

It is not psychosomatic…

…when skin diseases are activated by a bacterial infection, such as syphilis, leprosy and lupus. For more common diseases, such as eczema or psoriasis (60 000 new cases a year), the heredity and the atopic (the genetic predisposition to develop an allergy) are involved. An eczema, associated with repeated rhinitis and a cough, is the cutaneous sign of an allergy: 90% of allergens implicated in this type of problems are eggs, cow’s milk, fish and peanuts.

It is psychosomatic…

…when most of the crises of chronic eczema and psoriasis have a psychic origin, according to Danièle Pomey-Rey, dermatologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. But, “we are uneven on genes and personality matters,” she balances. If we inherited very dry and atopic skin, we will more easily activate a skin disorder than an ulcer. The more or less strong the emotional vulnerability of each one makes the rest: mourning, stress, a break-up, or depression could activate eczema or psoriasis rashes.

Our neuro-cutaneous immune system partially explains these “hypersensitive” disorders: endowed with the same embryonic tissue, the skin and the nervous system are “first cousins.” As for the nerve cells, they have very close connections with the cutaneous cells: “we list about 20 neurotransmitters common to the skin and to the brain”, underlines Laurent Misery, dermatologist and researcher. “They enable the nervous system to be permanently informed, but also to check all the cutaneous functions.”

What to do?

Relief can be found through cortisone, acupuncture and massages – which have a sedative effect on the skin’s nerve endings. The hypnosis leans on feelings and their representations. Offering “a wider perception of ourselves and the world, it enables us to disconnect from gestures as scratching among others, hence avoiding the spread of eczema,” notes Dr Jean-Marc Benhaiem.

The dermato-psychiatrist combines local antidepressant treatments (to recapture the serotonin that favours the skin-brain harmony) and psychoanalytical work. The goal is to become aware of painful events and to master our feelings, so that they “do not” manifest themselves on the skin.

Stéphanie Torre

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Testimony: “I controlled my psoriasis thanks to psychoanalysis.”

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