How Stress Associated To Hair Loss?

Most of us have different interpretations of stress. Some focuses on achieving such situation and others may over react the situation itself. I had a college friend before who used to become the most popular and pretty due to her intelligence and confidence but suddenly the glow from her face weakened after her parents died in an accident. She became dry, thin and sluggish. The used to be active and team leader before rarely participate activities and became aloof. Because she hardly manages sleep and too afraid of her severe hair fall, she asked medication to her doctor and little by little she recovered from a self inflicting and stressful moment of her life. Our fight-or-flight response is our body's systematic reaction to a stressful event that makes our body produces larger amounts of chemicals such as cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, which trigger a faster pulse rate, over tensed muscles, too much sweating, and hyper alertness. Other system functions slow down, such as our digestive and immune system resulting to rapid breathing, high blood pressure and alertness. All these factors help us protect ourselves in a dangerous or challenging situation when we are in fight-flight response mode.

Stress either physical or mental is one of the major factors aside from heredity, hormonal, disease or illness and even mechanical damages and some others which greatly affect hair fall or hair loss (Alopecia). It usually occurs 2-3 months after a stressful event but will completely revive after stress has overcome. In most cases it is temporary but may trigger the onset of a genetic hair loss or may worsen existing Androgenic Alopecia. Stress causes hair follicles to enter telogen phase prematurely, making them to stop growing new hairs and eventually shed hairs.

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• Types of stressed-induced hair fall: The most common type is called telogen effluvium. The first form of it is that the hair follicles due to environmental “shock” decided to go on a resting stage for a while that results to hair shedding and thinning on the scalp area.  The other form of it is rather, the follicles may enter a resting stage as they normally would, but instead of returning to a new (anagen) hair growing state after a month or two, they stay in their telogen state for a longer period of time. There may not be much noticeable hair shedding, but there will be a slow thinning of the scalp hair. Lastly, the hair follicles do not stay in a resting state but rather cycle through shortened growth cycles. When this happens, the person experiences thin scalp hair and persistent shedding of short, thin hair fibers.This type of stress-induced hair fall may take 6-9 months of recovery.
• The other type of stress-induced hair loss is known as alopecia areata. It is a condition where hair is loss to some or all areas of hair. It is also called as spot baldness because of its first signs which are small bald patches that most commonly affect the beard and scalp. Hair may also be lost more diffusely over the whole scalp, in which case the condition is called diffuse alopecia areata.Alopecia areata monolocularis describes baldness in only one spot which may occur anywhere on the head.Alopecia areata multilocularis refers to multiple areas of hair loss. If the disease may be limited only to the beard,such case is called Alopecia areata barbae. In a more severe and rarer condition called Alopecia Totalis and Alopecia universalis, all hair on the entire body is lost including pubic hairs and eyelashes and in which proper medications and diet should be attain

                                                                                        

We are facing a lot of challenges in life which makes us a better person. We assessed these endeavors as either beneficial stressful or detrimental but what really matters are our thoughts about the situations in which we find ourselves in the end.