What experts say about stress, cortisol and moon face [Video]

Social media users just won’t stop talking about how the stress hormone cortisol can cause cheeks and eyelids to swell out of recognition, a condition dubbed “moon face.”

“Your face is like a moon, it can be very circular,” one woman claims on TikTok. “It can look swollen and inflamed.”

“It’s from high cortisol, aka high stress,” a woman says in another post. “When I was going through the pandemic I was like (she puffs out her cheeks) balloon face.”

As people scurry to fit more and more into each day, constant stress can be a reality in today’s busy society. But can such stress actually expand your face?

“While chronic stress can lead to increased levels of cortisol in the body, those levels …