Q: I have been really stressed out at work lately and have
noticed that my hair is thinning and clumping in the shower. Is it true that
stress can make your hair fall out?
اضافة اعلان
A: Healthy people shed around 50 to 100 strands of hair each
day, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.
But if you are losing more than that, it could be a sign of a
condition called telogen effluvium, or excessive hair shedding.
And telogen effluvium can certainly be induced by stress, said
Dr. Antonella Tosti, a dermatologist who treats hair loss at the University of
Miami Miller School of Medicine.
Experts don’t know exactly how common telogen effluvium is, in
part because many people are not diagnosed with it.
But women may be more likely to experience it than men, as it
can be set off by pregnancy-related changes in the body, said Dr. Angela Lamb,
a dermatologist at Mount Sinai in New York City.
This excess hair shedding can involve the loss of “up to a third
of your hair volume,” she added. But the good news is that it is usually
temporary.
Unpacking the CausesPeople often develop telogen effluvium between six weeks and
three months after a stressful event such as a major surgery, a chronic or
short-term illness (especially if it involved a fever), a pregnancy or a death
in the family — basically, “anything that causes a stress or shock to your
system,” Lamb said.
That’s because stress increases levels of cortisol in the body,
Lamb said, a hormone that has been shown to disrupt hair growth.
Research suggests that this kind of hair loss can occur after
people recover from COVID-19. In a 2022 study, for instance, researchers
surveyed nearly 6,000 people in Brazil who had recovered from COVID within the
past three months. Nearly half of those who responded reported experiencing
hair loss.
“If your hair was fine, and then you had COVID, and then six to
10 or 12 weeks later you are losing a ton of hair in the shower — that is
telogen effluvium,” Lamb said.
Telogen effluvium can develop in response to chronic everyday
stress, too, Tosti said, such as work or relationship stress.
Tosti said that stress could also cause or worsen other
conditions that lead to hair loss, such as alopecia areata, a disease in which
the immune system attacks and destroys hair follicles, and lichen planopilaris,
a rare inflammatory condition that can cause scalp scarring and hair loss. But
Lamb noted that there is no definitive research tying stress to these two
conditions.
What you can do
If you have been losing hair because of stress, Lamb recommended
taking a daily multivitamin containing vitamin D, which is involved in hair
growth, and vitamin B12, which has been shown to be deficient in some patients
with telogen effluvium — though the data on this is limited.
Vitamins may be especially important for people recovering from
major surgery, she said, as deficiencies can be more common during this time.
Lamb does not recommend over-the-counter supplements
specifically marketed to treat hair loss that contain high doses of biotin,
such as those sold by Vegamour, Nutrafol and Viviscal. Biotin supplements have
been shown to interfere with the results of thyroid hormone tests, and they can
sometimes cause acne flare-ups, she said.
If you want to try to accelerate hair growth, you could try an
over-the-counter, topical minoxidil treatment such as Rogaine, Tosti said. Or
you can ask your doctor for a prescription for oral minoxidil or oral
finasteride, which are often covered by health insurance, Lamb said.
These treatments could “help kick-start the hair to grow in
faster,” Lamb said. But most of the time, she added, stress-induced hair loss
dissipates and hair regrows on its own.
“You’ll go through that shedding phase, usually for several
weeks, maybe a few months, and then it will slow down,” she said.
That said, if shedding continues after three or four months, she
added, you may want to see a doctor.
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