http://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/well/stress-hair-loss.html [click thru for solutions]
ASK WELL
Can Stress Cause Hair Loss?
If your hair is thinning during particularly tense times, experts have thoughts on what might be going on.
Credit…Eric Helgas for The New York Times
- July 11, 2023
Q: I’ve 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?
Healthy people shed around 50 to 100 strands of hair each day, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. But if you’re 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 causes
People 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,” Dr. Lamb said.
That’s because stress increases levels of cortisol in the body, Dr. 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’re losing a ton of hair in the shower — that’s telogen effluvium,” Dr. Lamb said.
Telogen effluvium can develop in response to chronic everyday stress, too, Dr. Tosti said, such as work or relationship stress.
Dr. 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 Dr. Lamb noted that there is no definitive research tying stress to these two conditions.
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