While there are many factors that can lead to hair loss, stress is certainly one of them. But it’s more than just having a hard day at work; stress-related hair loss can come in a variety of forms. Here’s what you need to know about the different types of stress, and ways you can fight hair loss due to stress.
What Are the Different Types of Hair Loss?
There are two major categories of hair loss associated with stress: telogen effluvium, and trichotillomania.
Telogen Effluvium
Telogen effluvium is the medical term for stress hair loss. Naturally, you lose about 100 hairs a day, but if you have telogen effluvium, you can be losing an average of 300 hairs a day.
Trichotillomania
Trichotillomania is a mental disorder that involves urges to pull out hair. In most cases, people with trichotillomania are able to regrow their hair back, if they are able to stop pulling.
Physical Stress
Now that you know about the different types of hair loss, it’s important to recognize the causes of your stress. Physical stressors put a strain on your body. These can include:
- Excessive Alcohol
- Poor Diet
- Infection
- Injury
- Surgery
- Chemotherapy
- Tobacco
Physical stressors affect the growth cycle of your hair. Typically your hair goes through three phases: growth, rest, and shedding. Physical trauma can transition your hair to the shedding phase earlier than normal, which will cause your hair to start to thin out.
In most cases, once you resolve the physical stressors, your hair will go back to its normal growth cycle. With patience, the lost hair will grow back and you won’t see any changes in your hairline or thickness.
Emotional Stress
Emotional stress is just as serious as physical stress and can cause the same effects on your hair’s growth cycle as physical stress. Emotional stressors can include:
- Fear
- Anxiety
- Grief
- Information overload
- Guilt
- Shame
- Panic Attacks
For a better, healthier you, you have to focus on both your physical and mental well-being.
Ways to Relieve Emotional Stress
While you can’t always control the stressors that come in your life, you can control how you react and deal with that stress. Here are a few ways you can work on resolving existing emotional stress while also making you more resilient to future stressors.
Consistent and Frequent Exercise
Antidepressants aren’t the only way you can deal with depression. One of the best ways to make yourself feel better is through consistent exercise. You don’t have to start by running a marathon every day, but simple movements for as short as 10 or 15 minutes a day can help improve your neurochemistry and relieve stress.
Meditation
The goal of meditation is to calm your mind from all of the stress you feel. Rather than letting your mind run wild, meditation gives it a time and place to unwind and take a well-deserved break.
Taking a few minutes at the start of your day, or whenever you start to feel stress, can be enough to counteract the stress that’s causing your hair loss.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Many people carry stress in their muscles. When they’re stressed, their neck or backs start to seize and contract to create painful knots. Progressive muscle relaxation is a way for you to release that muscle tension. As you relax your body, your mind will follow, and you will start to feel less emotional stress.
Progressive muscle relaxation works one muscle group at a time. Start by having a clear idea of which muscle group you plan to relax. Breathe in, then tense that muscle group for up to ten seconds. As you breathe out, suddenly and completely relax the muscle you were tensing. Keep the muscle group relaxed for about twenty seconds before you move on to the next muscle group, and repeat the process.
By doing this you can help force your body to let go of tension and the emotional stress that caused that tension.
Visualization
Your imagination can help you relieve your stress. Visualization is a bit like daydreaming and uses your own mental imagery. When used properly, it can relax your mind. Visualization helps reduce stress by changing what your mind focuses on.
Eating a Healthy Diet
By eating healthy and changing your diet to include food like spinach, complex carbohydrates, and fatty fish, you can help fight against your stress levels.
Getting Enough Sleep
As an adult, you need to get at least seven hours of sleep every night. When you’re feeling stressed, the last thing you feel you can do is go to sleep, but it can help give your body and mind the energy needed to tackle any problem you have.
Setting Boundaries
Boundaries are the expectations and limitations you put in your life. Having clear boundaries around things like how long you are willing to work or how late you’ll stay up talking to someone can protect you from unnecessary stress.
Social Support
A major contributor to stress is feeling like you have to solve every problem by yourself. You feel that no one is in your corner, and the only way you’ll ever find success is if you do it yourself. This isn’t true. There are people around you who want to help and support you. By deepening your social network and finding people who want to share your problems, you lighten the burden you’re putting on yourself.
Self-Care
Self-care is anything you do to improve your physical, social, mental, spiritual, and emotional health. Rather than waiting for a doctor or therapist to prescribe an activity to keep you healthy, you go out of your way to manage your health yourself. This can feel unnatural at first for some people, but it’s important to remember that you are worth taking the time you need to keep yourself healthy and happy.
Use Fortero to Help Regrow Your Hair
Stress can cause hair loss, but you can use Fortero shampoo to help your hair grow back. It helps keep your scalp clean without leaving grimy residue or buildup to help new hair grow stronger. Try it today and look forward to healthier, fuller hair.
