That stress never really does any good to your hair or skin is well known. Lifestyle stress is one of the leading causes of patchy hair loss or alopecia among a huge number of men and women in the world today. Stress could be either physical or emotional. It could be work related or could stem from other reasons like a sudden onset of a serious disease, pregnancy, injury, surgery, a bereavement or breakdown of an intimate relationship. These factors - even assuming they don’t always lead to hair loss - play havoc with the health of your hair and leave you with dull, brittle and lifeless hair. In fact, the state of health of a person’s scalp or hair is often taken to be an indicator of how well the person is adapting to the stressful situations in his or her life.
Mechanism Of Hair Loss During Stress
The two types of hair loss associated with stress are Telogen Effluvium and Alopecia Areata. In the first type, the less severe of the two, about two-thirds of the individual’s hair enters the telogen stage or the dormant stage of hair growth cycle. This means that hair production ceases prematurely. Many people do not even realize the problem because the actual hair fall sets in 2 or 3 months later- which may actually be at the end of the stressful period which actually induced it. This makes it rather difficult to assess the exact cause of hair loss. In a majority of cases, the condition reverses within 6 to 12 months. Alopecia areata, on the other hand, is caused by an attack on the hair follicles by the body’s own immune system. In this, there is acute hair loss, usually in patches, but may also involve the entire scalp, and in some cases, even body hair. The hair loss condition may be reversed by itself or severe cases may require intensive treatment.
Treatment For Stress Hair Loss
Today, stress has become an inextricable part of everyday life, and it has become almost impossible to completely eliminate stress from life. The terrifying aspect of stress is that, it invariably begins to tell on every system and part of the body and hair is no exception. In most cases, hair loss stops when the stress-causing condition reduces or passes over. But if hair loss has been intense and if the scalp shows, then external treatments like oil massage, mineral supplementation or medicated shampoos may have to be used to restore hair. If stress has been diagnosed to be the reason for hair loss, then learning to cope with stress and reducing worry and anxiety may help improve your overall health and thereby reduce hair loss. Breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, hot oil massage, devising better time management techniques, or pursuing an interesting hobby could help alleviate stress from your life and improve the quantity and quality of your hair.
For most of us, stress may make us want to pull at our hair, but remember, if you do not learn to manage your stress effectively, you might just as well leave the ‘pulling out” bit – it may happen without your help.