It’s the morning before your first final of the quarter. You stumble down the hall to the bathroom, and there in the mirror, you see it — a zit. And not just any zit, a zit of third-eye proportions smack in the middle of your forehead. How could this be? Yesterday your skin was crystal clear and now you have to put on a beanie before you can attack the biochem behemoth that awaits you — the last thing you needed.

This is not a rare experience among Stanford students who might also find more hair than usual coming out in their hair brushes during periods of high stress. Still, few realize that the mystery culprit is stress.

Excessive stress impacts the body just as much as the mind, if not more. It can appear in the form of acne, mood-swings or even hair loss.

“When I get stressed out I find myself getting really tired,” said freshman Alia Liberman. “I sleep worse and my skin breaks out. My mood is also much more susceptible to change because I am really tense all the time.”

Laura McDonald, freshman, also believes that stress affects her body.

“When I am stressed, I find that I eat more,” McDonald said. “I take comfort in food — it makes me feel better when I feel like things are going badly.”

One stressed student also named insomnia on her list of symptoms.

“I don’t sleep badly when I am stressed, but I definitely sleep less because I feel like I have to work more,” McDonald added. “I also feel more like talking to people about my problems when I am stressed, to help me deal.”

Kate Bedford, a Peer Health Coordinator for Vaden Health Services, believes that most stress is not a major health concern.

“It is important to really look at the terms that you use,” Bedford said. “The word stressed can be used incorrectly. Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. A championship game can be stressful, but that doesn’t mean it is bad or good.”

Bedford said there is a way to determine the difference between unmanageable stress and the “good” stress.

“Unmanaged stress can disrupt sleep and make you feel tense or grumpy and affect your concentration,” Bedford said. “When everything feels difficult and overwhelming, that is a sign you are not managing your stress well.”

Bedford added, “Also, when students are under stress they tend move their focus from taking care of themselves to their work. That can mean they don’t sleep enough, they don’t eat as nutritious foods and they don’t take time to exercise or have fun.”

Kelly McGonigal, a health educator who teaches stress reduction for the Stanford Prevention Research Center, said she believes stress can cause numerous weight problems such as the infamous “freshman 15.”

“Stress influences weight in a number of ways,” McGonigal said. “Stress can increase our cravings for unhealthy food, especially when stress is combined with sleep deprivation.”

Stress hormones actually encourage the body to store fat, she added, which explains why some people spontaneously gain weight without changing their eating habits.

“If you try to deal with stress through excessive exercise, you can actually increase stress levels and exhaust your body’s natural resiliency,” McGonigal said. “The best kind of exercise to deal with stress and stress-related weight gain is anything that you love doing, and that creates a sense of flow or total absorption.”

She cited dancing, climbing, running and yoga as common examples.

“The most important aspect is that you enjoy doing it, not how many calories it burns,” she said.

There are many different ways of reducing unmanageable stress. Bedford explained that doing something “extreme” will not help the problem. Rather, one must change their lifestyle patterns to cope with stress.

“You won’t have any stress if you drop out of school, but that isn’t what you want,” Bedford said. “What you want is to cope well with the stress you have.”

Getting enough sleep and eating regularly are two of the most important strategies for combating the negative impacts of stress, Bedford said.

“Reducing stress means figuring out your priorities and that can be really hard on this campus,” she said, adding that many Stanford students are prone to overcommitting their time, pushing themselves closer to burnout.

“When midterms or finals roll around, they find themselves under a lot of pressure,” Bedford said. “It is hard to let go of the need- to-do-everything mentality.”

McGonigal believes that the key to reducing stress is a matter of changing one’s perception of life.

“Keep in mind the big picture — your goals, dreams and values, and how your actions now relate to them,” she said. “Keep your focus on the things that matter most to you.”

She also warned students not to sacrifice their current health and sanity to worry about a hypothetical future.

“The best way to prepare to be happy in the future,” McGonigal said, “is to practice being happy now.”