What Role Does Your Stress Level Play in Hair Loss?
We live in a rush, rush world and that makes stress a common component for all of us. Given this, what role if any does stress play in your hair loss? The answer might surprise you.
The medical literature on hair loss is thick enough to fill a book. In fact, it fills a couple different books. The primary focus of the research is on genetics because, well, these days everything is about genetics. Sadly, what most people don't realize is the discovery of a gene that does something rarely leads to an actual treatment, but I digress.
If genetics are paramount, does stress play a role in that hair you see in the shower drain? The answer is yes. Medical researchers believe the DNA determines if we will lose our hair and, if so, when that will occur. That being said, stress creates a large number of hormonal secretions in the body. These hormonal fluxes are believed to damage the hair follicles, resulting in premature baldness.
Importantly, stress alone cannot make you go bald. Instead, it speeds up the rate of baldness and can increase the area where excessive hair loss occurs. A hormone like dihydrotestosterone for instance can be secreted during high stress periods. This hormone will communicate with hair follicles and essentially tell them to stop producing hair far earlier than they would naturally. This leads to the thinning of hair and/or spots of baldness.
None of the above should really be surprising. Stress is considered one of the biggest killers in modern society. It leads to a host of health problems and learning to deal with stress in your personal, business and physical life is critical to not only slowing hair loss problems, but saving your body from falling apart and putting you in an early grave.