Telogen effluvium is a common type of hair loss that affects people after they experience severe stress or a change to their body. Symptoms include thinning hair, usually around the top of your head. Treatment exists to reverse hair loss, but hair will typically grow back in three to six months without treatment.
Telogen effluvium hair loss — the type of hair loss linked to stress — typically affects your scalp and may appear as patchy hair loss. However, it can also cause you to shed more body hair or notice less hair on your body than you normally would.
Hair loss caused by stress is usually only temporary. If you've lost hair as a result of stress or anxiety, there's every chance it will start to grow back once your stress levels are back to normal. Try working on reducing your stress levels as well as improving your general health and wellbeing.
The hair loss is temporary, and should return to its pre-effluvium density, although this process is generally slow. It can take months (but generally less than 6) before the shedding stops, and then months to years for lost hair to grow back at the sluggish rate of ~½ inch per month.
Signs of Hair Loss
While men usually see a receding hairline, women tend to lose hair from the top of their scalp. The gap on the part of your hair may widen, or you may notice bald spots when you put your hair up.
Long-term, or chronic, stress puts people at risk for a variety of health problems. These can include depression and anxiety, as well as problems with digestion and sleep. Chronic stress has also long been linked to hair loss, but the reasons weren't well understood.
Telogen effluvium is a common type of hair loss that affects people after they experience severe stress or a change to their body. Symptoms include thinning hair, usually around the top of your head. Treatment exists to reverse hair loss, but hair will typically grow back in three to six months without treatment.
In healthy individuals biotin does not need to be supplemented [14]. Only riboflavin, biotin, folate, and vitamin B12 deficiencies have been associated with hair loss.
For many people, genetics causes hair loss that occurs as you age. But other factors, including medication, stress, and hormonal fluctuations, can also make your hair fall out.
So try not to stress out about a few individual strands of lost hair on your hair tie. If you're concerned that you're shedding more hair than this, or you've noticed substantial hair loss when you wash or brush your hair, you're probably not paranoid. This may be the first sign of sustained hair loss.
Sleep deprivation is a form of stress and stress is known to affect hair loss. It can cause temporary hair loss conditions such as telogen effluvium, and can also exacerbate hereditary hair loss in both men and women with a genetic predisposition to androgenic alopecia.
Seeing a visible scalp is often a sign of fine hair, and genetics can be the primary cause for this type of hair loss. However, other common causes of thinning hair include stress, hormone imbalances, certain medications, illness or infections and malnutrition.
If the doctor gently tugs on some hairs on your scalp and four or more hairs come out, you probably have telogen effluvium. Also, the hairs will look like hairs in the telogen phase — they will have a white bulb at the end that was in the scalp, and will not have a gel-like covering around that end of the hair.
Whether depression is mild or severe, there is indeed evidence that it can affect hair growth and cause hair loss. And what's worse, both the physical and psychological effects of clinical depression may increase your risk of hair loss (as may the effects of other mental health conditions, for that matter).
It's normal to shed between 50 and 100 hairs a day. When the body sheds significantly more hairs every day, a person has excessive hair shedding.
By the time you turn 30, you have a 25% chance of displaying some balding. By age 50, 50% of men have at least some noticeable hair loss. By age 60, about two-thirds are either bald or have a balding pattern. While hair loss is more common as you get older, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to accept.
Testing for Stress-Related Hair Loss
Dried Urine Cortisol testing is a non-invasive collection method. It is used as a diagnostic tool to identify chronic stress disorders and may also be useful in understanding stress-related hair loss. This testing is part of the DUTCH Complete™ panel offerings.
Dr. Downie recommends Nutrafol or Viviscal to everyone experiencing hair loss, stress-related or not, which can help you see results in four to six months.
hair loss—are they different? "Hair shedding refers to a condition known as telogen effluvium1 , when the hair sheds more than usual," board-certified dermatologist Marisa Garshick, M.D., FAAD, tells mbg. "On the other hand, hair loss often refers to a state when something stops the hair from growing," Garshick says.
Some of the mild to severe symptoms of associated psychological problems with hair loss are: anxiety, anger, depression, embarrassment, decreased confidence, reduction in work and sexual performance, social withdrawal, and suicidal tendencies.
Low progesterone and estrogen are also often to blame for thinning hair during menopause. Hair loss from menopausal hormone deficiencies can take many forms. Most women notice thinning throughout their scalps, which may be visible when you part your hair or you might notice a thinner pony tail.
One cause may be changing levels of hormones during menopause. Estrogen and progesterone levels fall, meaning that the effects of the androgens, male hormones, are increased. During and after menopause, hair might become finer (thinner) because hair follicles shrink.