4 1GT Tuesday September 15 2020 | the times

times2health

Has the crisis aged your

face? This doctor says yes

If you suspect that six months of stress, bad eating

and booze has wrecked your skin, you’re not wrong

— ‘Covid face’ is everywhere, says Hannah Betts

‘M

y face! Post-

lockdown it’s

as if I’m

looking in

fairground

mirrors. Head

on, it’s like

some vast,

angry moon — grey, mottled and

furious. Then I catch sight of myself

while texting and it’s a collapsed

concertina of lines and chins. I can no

longer even say I look like my mother

— I look like some exhumed medieval

ancestor.” I am catching up with a

friend and, while we are trying to

confine ourselves to serious matters

— the R number, the rule of six,

cancelled Christmas — the most

pressing topic is how unrecognisably

haggard we look.

“Tell me about it,” she says with a

sigh. “I turned 40 last week, but could

pass for 20 years older. My laptop is on

my dressing table so I’m constantly

distracted by wrinkles, sunspots and

that great downward slump. The past

few months have massively taken their

toll. I’ve been working full-time,

home-teaching, looking after my aged

father, not sleeping, mainlining

takeaways and self-medicating with

booze. The result: I may not have had

coronavirus, but I’m suffering an acute

case of Covid face.”

We are not alone. According to

research commissioned by the

cosmetic treatment specialist Uvence,

16 per cent of us — almost four million

British women — feel that the stress

and anxiety brought about by the

pandemic has caused them to age by

at least five years, with almost half

(42 per cent) reporting signs of stress

and premature ageing, most obviously

around the eyes. Meanwhile, a study

by the treatments website Glowday

found that more than a quarter of

women in the UK (27 per cent) feel

that lockdown has aged them. This

rang most true among the 25 to

34-year-old demographic, with

44 per cent maintaining this to be

the situation. To which my friend

and I would say: “Wait till you turn

40, then come talk to me.”

For all those who approached

lockdown as if it were some sort of

chichi home spa there are millions

more of us for whom it has proved to

be an unslept wallowing in grief, stress,

home work, housework, lamentable

eating habits, upped sugar and alcohol

intake, and increased sun damage.

I’ve heard it referred to as “Covid

face”, “lockdown looks”, “corona

kisser”, even “pandemic grimace”.

Either way, the result isn’t pretty.

The cosmetic physician and

psychiatrist Dr Suha Kersh of the

west London clinic 23MD is adamant

that something momentous has

taken place. “Covid face is a huge

phenomenon — I’d say 80 per cent of

my clients have it. From June, there

was a deluge of patients, and I couldn’t

argue with them because they did look

exhausted, they did look older, they

did need quite a bit of work.” She

consulted colleagues and found the

situation to be widespread. “They’d

seen it, but nobody was talking about

it. Nobody had put one and one

together; it was too soon. But when

they started looking at the changes

they realised, yes, there had been a

major shift in how people looked

before and after lockdown.”

At 52, she counted herself among

this group. “Even for me, I noticed a

massive change. I saw it mostly when

I was at Zoom meetings. You look sad,

you look tired and there’s a huge

amount of volume loss. The skin is just

not as robust. I was getting comments

from my family about how I looked.

‘You look terrible, you look tired,

you’ve changed.’ So I had to do a bit of

treatment for myself.” Her youngest

patients were in their early thirties

with dry, sagging skin and tear-trough

indentations (hollow eyes). However,

the group that has witnessed most

change has been those of 40 upwards.

Women especially have been

bearing the facial brunt, a reflection of

One complaint

is ‘Zoom face’,

which makes

jowls look worse