Its winter morning and you are attending your lecture in the classroom sitting at the back. Well, you are not actually paying heed to the professor because all you can see your crush sitting in the front row. Imagine you’ve been looking at your crush and he/she suddenly looks back at you. Yeah, that can’t happen and that’s why I wrote: “imagine”. Now you act as if for all the time you’ve been focusing on your teacher only and you start ignoring him/her. You turn your face towards your friend. “Why are you blushing?” your friend asks. And your cheeks exposed you.
BLUSHING!! How can blushing expose you? How actually your body reacts when you blush?
In simple words, when you blush, your face, basically cheeks’ area but sometimes forehead too turns either red or pink. Just like many involuntary reactions of our body blushing is also involuntary. Many people, especially girls, want their cheeks to look pink all the time. Makeup is what they rely upon for this. But natural blushing happens because of psychological reasons or emotions that can be triggered by various feelings. Dermatologists also argue that sometimes this may happen that blushing is actually not blushing but may be a sign of some other condition. The redness of cheeks is also caused by the factors that indicate to various health or skin issues.
Mentioning such factors here one by one-
- SUN EXPOSURE: You can get that red color effect on your face just by sitting out in the sun in your balcony. People may sometimes feel it be a natural blush. Although you’ve not done any artificial thing to your cheeks this is not, what we say, ‘blush’. What actually has happened to you is a suntan. A milder version of suntan on your cheeks. This happens because our skin has a natural defense system. Ultraviolet rays of the sun penetrate to the bottom of the skin triggering it to produce melanin. This melanin is a pigment that is reddish-brown in color. And that makes your skin look like blushing natural skin.
- Cold weather: Extreme weather conditions, either if it is too cold or too hot, make a person’s skin to turn red. Cold conditions cause face to turn red because our body tries to warm itself at that time. In winters when the skin is exposed to cold, the blood vessels which are near the skin widen up, allowing more of the blood to flow. This reaction helps the body to warm up. That is why you find many people carrying a natural blush on their cheeks mostly in cold weather conditions.
- Emotions: As stated above, there are various feelings that trigger your emotions which you can hide but your skin will expose through blushing. These emotions include:
(a). Anger: when you get energy, you feel warmth in your body. That is your blood rushing through your body and face which turns it red in color.
(b). Embarrassment: Embarrassment causes not only your cheeks but ears also to turn hot red. This is because of the reaction of our nervous system when we feel embarrassed.
(c). Anxiety: Intense stress like condition makes your body to heat up quickly and makes blood to run fast in body and face capillaries.
(d). Shyness: Just for the same reasons of other emotions, shyness also causes us to blush.
These emotions may sometimes be so intense that they cause you to sweat by heating up your body.
- Romantic reasons: This is the most common known reason for blushing. We blush in front of our crush, someone whom we love or someone who loves us. Why? One of the reasons that because some people feel shy while talking to their crush. But apart from this blush is something, as accepted since ancient times that attract the opposite gender. That is why women do blush makeup for a long time back.
But guys BEWARE! It does not mean that if someone blushes while talking to you then he /she actually likes you. As the article is about the actual and many reasons for blushing.
- During Menopause in females: Yes it sounds weird but it is one of the reasons for females to blush sometimes. Actually what happens during their menopause cycle is, they get hot flashes. A woman feels a sudden rush of warmth through her body especially face and neck area causing it to appear as if blushing. Such hot flashes are normal during a menopause cycle.
- Acne: As already told, blushing can also be a symptom of a skin issue. Acne is one of them. Acne is a skin inflammation problem in which skin pores get blocked due to oil, dirt, etc. This blockage causes redness on the skin. Acne situations can also get worse if these pores catch bacteria and develop infection making your face look redder.
Rosy cheeks, except for romantic reasons, are undesirable most of the times. But this is involuntary. We don’t have control over our blushing. So, is there no way to control it? Yes, there are ways to control it. It can be avoided by avoiding the basic causes those lie behind. Some of the tips to manage your blushing are:
- Breathe deep and slow: Relax yourself and your body. Since we know that many times blushing is caused when you feel anxious and embarrass, it is utter important to calm yourself down.
- Smile: Researchers say that if you smile even in a stressful situation it will make you realize that the situation will appear less stressful for you. So, when you feel stress, smile to avoid redness on your face.
- Keep yourself hydrated: Keep your body cool. Don’t give it a reason to feel the heat inside. Proper hydration will keep you to stay cool and to avoid blushing.
You can’t stop blushing when you start to but you can control it. Controlling anger, anxiety, stress and other emotions those cause your face to heat up and sweat will surely keep the blushing problem at bay for you.
