Yes, stress and hair loss can be related. Three types of hair loss can be associated with high stress levels: Telogen effluvium. In telogen effluvium (TEL-o-jun uh-FLOO-vee-um), significant stress pushes large numbers of hair follicles into a resting phase.
Whether depression is mild or severe, there is indeed evidence that it can affect hair growth and cause hair loss. And what's worse, both the physical and psychological effects of clinical depression may increase your risk of hair loss (as may the effects of other mental health conditions, for that matter).
Emotional stress can also trigger a specific type of alopecia, called alopecia areata. This is characterised by sudden bald patches on the scalp, which can spread to cover the entire head. Again, hair loss caused by alopecia areata is not permanent and often grows back, although sometimes treatment is required.
Some of the mild to severe symptoms of associated psychological problems with hair loss are: anxiety, anger, depression, embarrassment, decreased confidence, reduction in work and sexual performance, social withdrawal, and suicidal tendencies.
What we do know is that anxiety can contribute to hair loss in several ways, from affecting the growth cycle of your hair to increasing your risk of mental disorders such as trichotillomania, a type of hair pulling disorder that can damage your hair follicles.
Yes, stress and hair loss can be related. Three types of hair loss can be associated with high stress levels: Telogen effluvium. In telogen effluvium (TEL-o-jun uh-FLOO-vee-um), significant stress pushes large numbers of hair follicles into a resting phase.
Telogen effluvium is a common type of hair loss that affects people after they experience severe stress or a change to their body. Symptoms include thinning hair, usually around the top of your head. Treatment exists to reverse hair loss, but hair will typically grow back in three to six months without treatment.
Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition that involves extreme changes in mood, behaviors, and thoughts. Treatment for the condition often involves the use of medications. While these medications can help control symptoms, they can cause side effects, including hair thinning or hair loss in some cases.
Trichotillomania. This condition is an impulse control disorder caused by anxiety or stress. Often called “hair-pulling disorder,” people with trichotillomania have the irresistible urge to pull out their own hair, eyelashes or eyebrows. The area of hair loss is usually asymmetric and follows an irregular pattern.
Hair structure
The hair root is in the skin and extends down to the deeper layers of the skin. It is surrounded by the hair follicle (a sheath of skin and connective tissue), which is also connected to a sebaceous gland. Each hair follicle is attached to a tiny muscle (arrector pili) that can make the hair stand up.
Texture Changes: While not as common, stress may also impact the texture of your tresses. “High levels of [cortisol] can, in some cases, cause changes in texture and appearance because it does affect follicle function,” Friese notes.
The type and amount of hormones present in your body when you are under stress can create changes to the texture of your hair. Stress can cause a person who normally has very thick hair to have significantly less.
The study showed that stress causes the release of the chemical norepinephrine into the follicle. Norepinephrine affects the melanocyte stem cells living there. It causes them to rapidly turn into pigment cells and move out of the hair follicles.
In times of distress, we may seek different means of escape, such as a major haircut, instead of recognizing how making a drastic, and possibly regrettable, change to our appearance will only give us a fleeting sense of agency, argues Newman.
It helps us embrace another side of ourselves during trying times. Cutting our hair is also an easy way to achieve instant gratification. When everything feels like it's falling apart, we can have some control over our new look. And it acts as a sort of release.
Stress hair loss, or telogen effluvium, looks like hair falling out quickly from combing, washing, or even just touching the hair. The hair on the scalp may be thinning, but the scalp looks healthy and does not have scales or rashes.
Overview. Trichotillomania (trik-o-til-o-MAY-nee-uh), also called hair-pulling disorder, is a mental disorder that involves recurrent, irresistible urges to pull out hair from your scalp, eyebrows or other areas of your body, despite trying to stop.
If you have developed a fear of baldness, it may have been triggered by your own hair loss or even a traumatic event such as seeing a relative or friend lose hair to illness.
Mood swings of bipolar disorder are more random and less related to events than those of borderline. Those with bipolar might have a hair-trigger kind of response during an episode, whereas the borderline person has a hair-trigger response all of the time.
You are perhaps suffering from this very condition – Hair Dysmorphia. Many experts say that this feeling of discontent stems from 'wanting what I don't have', fuelled by the existing social set-up that's high on social media flashing and societal expectations.
Thought Patterns During Manic Episodes
Flight of ideas: In the extreme, racing thoughts can accelerate to the point of you being unable to focus entirely on one thought before moving to the next. In conversation, you may be unable to speak coherently, which can be distressing.
If you spend an inordinate amount of time staring in the mirror and ruminating over your hairline, you could start to suspect that you're losing hair. The thinning of hair is a slow process that is often one of the first indicators of male and female pattern hair loss.
Trichotemnomania (from Greek – temnein – to cut) is hair-loss due to cutting or shaving by patients in the context of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Unlike trichotillomania, it is a little-known self-induced alopecia (1–4).
Stress is not always the culprit of hair loss, but when it comes to high levels of stress and PTSD, especially for women in their thirties and forties, hair loss could be the result of stressful or traumatic life changes.