Managing your stress can protect your hair.
The daily grind of life. It’s not uncommon to have days when stress makes us feel like pulling our hair out. But can stress actually cause hair loss?
Medical experts say yes and cite extreme stress as the cause of two different forms of hair loss: telogen effluvium and alopecia areata.
To understand how stress can affect your hair, it is helpful to know how hair grows.
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How Hair Grows
Hair grows from the hair follicles just under your skin’s surface.
Your soft tresses are composed of the same protein (keratin) that your nails are. The follicles produce live keratin cells, but the hair you see is composed of dead keratin cells.
Each follicle has a life cycle of its own, which is divided into three periods: anagen, catagen, and telogen.
The anagen stage is the growth stage and it can last from two to six years. The catagen stage is a two or three-week transitional period between the growth stage and the resting stage. The telogen stage is the resting period, which lasts eight to twelve weeks.
