How Does Stress Affect Hair Loss?
Your hair has a
way of telling you if your body is in balance. If you are healthy -
physically as well as emotionally - your hair will be radiant and
shining and your scalp pliant and moist.
If you are not
well physically, or if you are upset emotionally, your hair becomes
dull and lifeless - it will begin to fall out, and your hair will
become waxy with the overproduction of your traumatised sebaceous
glands.
If your hair is thinning or you are
experiencing baldness and it seems abnormal either because you are
young or female, it is more than likely that stress is the culprit of
hair loss. Your hair is one of the first places your body shows
distress. Illness, medication and imbalances in nutrition all show up
in you hair and scalp.
Usually, it is not mild job or life
stress that triggers hair loss, more likely it is extremely serious
stress to the body that causes hair to stop growing and fall out.
These types of stress can be initiated by some types of medications,
diabetes, thyroid disorders and even extreme emotional stress, but
also can be caused by commonplace life events like childbirth,
miscarriage and surgery.
Any major change
in our lives can be reflected in the condition of our hair, scalp and
skin. We reflect our health and well-being in the condition of our
hair and scalp.
But how does
stress actually effect hair loss? Well hair grows in repeating
cycles. The active growth phase lasts around two years and is
followed by a resting phase that spans three months, after which the
hair falls from the scalp. Normally, every strand of hair in your
head is at a different point in this cycle, so the shedding is barely
noticeable: a few strands in the shower drain, some more on your
brush, a hair or two on your pillow. A normal head sheds at most 100
strands of hair a day.
However, when the
body undergoes extreme stress, as much as 70 percent of your hair can
prematurely enter the resting phase. Three months later, these hairs
begin to fall out, causing noticeable hair loss.
The person will
not become completely bald and the thinning will be fairly
unnoticeable. However, it is this three month delay and the fact that
the trigger seems so unrelated that causes confusion on the part of
the patient concerned about hair loss.
Fortunately, in
most cases hair will begin to grow back within six months. However,
some people may face further periods of severe stress that may
trigger the whole process to begin again and cause more hair loss
resulting in a more long-term problem.
