Hair Loss: The Stress Connection

From crash diets to the death of a loved one, severe stress can make you lose your hair. The good news: It's probably only temporary.

Stress can bring on a whole host of health problems, from headaches to high blood pressure. But did you know that stress can also cause hair loss? While it’s a common myth that stress causes permanent hair loss, according to the American Hair Loss Council, many experts agree that stress can have a temporary effect on the hair, resulting in excessive shedding or unsightly bald spots. Forget about a bad hair day — stress-induced hair loss can cause bad-hair months!

Before you start stressing out about stress’s effect on your hair, keep in mind that most of us deal with everyday stress — whether it’s caused by a work deadline or a fight with a friend — without ever noticing a negative effect on our hair. Rather, it’s severe physical or emotional stress that tends to cause hair loss.

There are two common forms of stress-induced hair loss:

Telogen effluvium. According to MayoClinic.com, telogen effluvium is the most common form of stress-induced hair loss. It can result from nutritional deficiencies caused by a crash diet, surgery, a high fever, or a death in the family. This condition can also be caused by other factors, such as hormonal changes that result from pregnancy or the use of birth control pills.

With telogen effluvium, stress causes a larger-than-average number of hairs to shift out of the growth, or anagen, phase all at once and enter the resting, or telogen, phase of the normal hair-growth cycle. The hair then falls out several months later. (If you’re trying to figure out why you’re suddenly losing handfuls of hair each time you shampoo, it might help to think back on your state of mind a few months ago.) While it’s normal for us to shed up to 100 strands of hair a day out of the roughly 100,000 most of us have on our head, telogen effluvium causes excessive shedding. The condition is generally temporary, but it can take several months for hair to grow back after the cause of the stress has been reduced or eliminated.

Alopecia areata is another type of hair loss that can be caused by intense stress, according to MayoClinic.com. With alopecia areata, the body’s immune system attacks affected hair follicles and stops the hair-growth stage, says Dr. Craig Ziering, a hair transplantation specialist and the founder and medical director of Ziering Medical in Beverly Hills. Unlike the excessive shedding associated with telogen effluvium, alopecia areata tends to cause small, round, bald patches on the scalp and can progress to total scalp-hair loss (which is called alopecia totalis) or total body-hair loss (alopecia universalis).

Unfortunately, the stress that most women feel when they realize they’re losing their hair by the handful or sporting bald patches only worsens the problem. So it’s important to work on developing coping mechanisms to reduce stress, Dr. Ziering says. (We know — it’s easier said than done. But a few yoga classes can’t hurt.)

The hair-happy news about stress-induced hair loss is that when you reduce or eliminate the stress, the hair tends to grow back. So relax, grab a hat, and wait for those good-hair days to come again.