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She's only a few feet away.
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The closer he gets, the more nervous he becomes, the budding zit on his nose growing bigger and bigger until it practically eclipses his face.
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She looks at him hovering nearby, sees the massive zit, and giggles.
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He slumps away, feeling sick.
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Stress can sure make a mess, and it happens to both teens and adults.
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But how does it happen?
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Let's rewind to before the zit, to before Justin even sees his crush.
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Already late for school, Justin got to class just in time to hear the teacher say "pop quiz."
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He hadn't done his homework the night before, and felt more unprepared than the ambushed World War II soldiers he was supposed to write about.
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A sudden rush of panic swept over his body, leaving him with sweaty palms, a foggy mind, and a racing heart.
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He stumbled out of class in a daze, and ran straight into his all-time crush, spiking up his stress.
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Stress is a general biological response to a potential danger.
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In primitive caveman terms, stress can make you fight for your life, or run for your life, if, for example, you're confronted by a hungry saber-tooth tiger.
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Special chemicals called stress hormones run through your body, giving you more oxygen and power to run away from danger or to face it and fight for your life,
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hence the term "fight or flight."
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But when you don't fight, or take flight, you face the plight.
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When we're taking final exams, sitting in traffic or pondering pollution, we internalize stress.
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It all begins in the brain.
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The hypothalamus, the master controller of your hormones, releases something called corticotropin-releasing hormone.
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This triggers the pituitary gland, a pea-sized gland found at the base of the brain, to release adrenocorticotropic hormone
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which then stimulates the adrenal gland sitting on top of the kidneys to release cortisol, the major stress hormone.
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These natural chemicals are a great help when you need to run away quickly, or do superhuman feats of courage,
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but when you're simply sitting, these stress hormones collect in the body and affect your overall health.
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Stress hormones increase inflammation in the body, suppress the immune system,
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which makes you more susceptible to infection by acne-causing bacteria, and can even increase oil production in the skin.
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And this is the perfect storm for forming a pimple.
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Cortisol is a major stress hormone involved in making skin cells churn out oily lipids from special glands called sebaceous glands.
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But when there's too much of these oily lipids, called sebum, they can plug up the swollen, inflamed pores and trap the pesky, acne-causing bacteria inside,
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where they set up house and thrive.
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Add a dash of inflammatory neuropeptides released by the nervous system when you're -- well, nervous -- and angry zits follow.
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To make matters worse, Justin is a boy, meaning he's got more testosterone than girls.
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Testosterone is another hormone that increases oil production in the skin.
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So, his already oily skin, together with a boost in oil and inflammation from stress, is the perfect environment for bacteria to swell, swell, swell up into a major zit.
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So what could've Justin done to avoid the big pimple?
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Stressful situations are unavoidable.
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But we can try to change our responses so that we're not so stressed in the end.
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And had he been confident in approaching her, she might not have noticed the pimple, or he might not have had one.