Hair Loss: A Double Dose Of Stress
16th May 2016
If you’re worried about your thinning tresses, you might want to take a close look at your wellbeing as a starting point. Believe it or not, stress is the second biggest cause of hair loss after genetics – and here’s the science behind it.
Hair has a programmed life cycle, starting with a growth phase, followed by a rest period and finally a shedding phase. The rate of growth can be affected by a number of factors, including your health, age and environmental reasons, such as stress levels.
It’s normal to lose around 100 hair strands every day, so it’s no cause for concern if you find stray hairs on your bedroom floor or in the shower. But, if you experience a noticeable difference to the density of your hair, and it just so happens that you’ve been having a difficult time at work, it’s possible that stress has had a part to play.
When a person is stressed, anxious or unwell, the growth cycle can be prematurely sent into shock and trigger more hair to enter the shedding phase. This can give the appearance of sudden hair loss and consequently cause more anxiety as a result.
However, being stressed-out doesn’t mean you’ll wake up with a huge tuft of hair on your pillow the following day. It can take between three and six months for your hair to shed, meaning people may not be able to link it back to an earlier, stressful event.
Mass shedding is also a common side effect of child birth and often occurs around three months after delivery. As hormone levels rise during pregnancy, the shedding phase can come to a halt and hair becomes thicker than normal. This means hair will fall out once hormone levels balance out again and while women may think their hair is thinning, it’s just returning to its usual state.
While you may be tearing your hair out about losing your locks, trauma-induced hair loss is usually temporary and tends to return once stress levels are reduced. If you’re worried about your hair loss and haven’t got to the root of the problem, why not get in touch?
