As the world continues advancing all around us, it seems that some of us are falling behind due to the weight of it all. Stress has been increasingly on the rise around the globe, and there doesn’t seem to be any signs of it decreasing in the near future.
While stress isn’t a new response for humans, it is one that we are continuing to learn the intricacies about. Chronic stress has been regularly shown to have deleterious effects on the human body and mind, affecting the ways in which we think, feel, communicate, and act. While symptoms vary between people, there are common signs we can tend to look for—ones that stand out as being directly related to stress. These include tremors, increased heart rate, excessive sweating, mild dizziness, and more. A symptom that is often overlooked is that of hair loss. While sometimes considered a myth, stress-induced hair loss is a thing, and it can pop up in different forms.
Chronic bouts of stress have been shown to lead to periodic hair loss, as continual stressors eventually lead to compromises within the body, particularly to the immune system. While stress can trigger other, more negative, health effects in people, it has been shown to leave the afflicted with hair that feels thinner or weaker or is simply falling out.
As briefly mentioned, stress and anxiety, when severe or constant, can lead to progressive hair loss, but they can also trigger other conditions that can lead to an increase in hair loss over time. What are these conditions, and should they be ones you should worry about when noticing another bout of stress returning? Here are three of the most common hair loss conditions that can either be produced by stress and/or can help increase symptoms of stress.