There is strong research linking stress and hair loss. Telogen effluvium, a form of temporary hair loss characterized by diffuse thinning of the hair often caused by stress, disrupts your three natural hair growth patterns – anagen, catagen, telogen.
There seems to be more and more stress on men and women these days, and these growing levels of anxiety are causing more people to seek treatment for their hair loss.
So how exactly does stress cause hair loss? Fortunately, if you are only experiencing low levels of stress, you are not going to lose your hair because of it. Hair loss caused by stress comes from a larger stressful experience or incident.
There is also not just one factor of why stress can cause hair loss, but is actually a combination or several factors. When you are under a great deal of stress, your body produces more adrenaline and any excess adrenaline that your body does not use is converted into cholesterol. When you have raised levels of cholesterol, it increases your level of testosterone. For people with a sensitivity to testosterone, it can negatively impact their hair follicles.
Your immune system can suffer if you are feeling stress or anxiety, and this makes you more susceptible to getting an illness or an infection. This can impact your hair’s growth cycle, since the average person has 90% of their hair in the growing cycle, which will usually last a few years before it goes into a resting stage and then falls out. On average, people lose 100 hairs each day, but if your hair’s growing cycle is disrupted, it can cause more hairs than usual to go into the resting phase, and can also cause a lot of hair to fall out all at once.
This will usually happen around two months after a stressful event or an illness. Many women experience mild hair loss following pregnancy. Most people who suffer from this type of hair loss only experience temporary hair loss and their hair will usually resume its normal growth cycle once they alleviate the cause of their stress. Once you have gotten rid of your stress, you should notice significant improvements in your overall health, in addition to your hair growth.
If you have already started to notice thinning hair or bald spots, if you continue to look at your hair in the mirror to check if it has gotten worse, you will only be adding to your stress. There are excellent hair loss treatments available at Modena Hair Institute that can restore your confidence, such as follicular unit extraction (FUE) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
PRP works by stimulating newly implanted or inactive hair follicles into an active growth phase. Modena Hair Institute in Orange County, Las Vegas and Beverly Hills offers a highly advanced version of PRP therapy that is enhanced with a one-of-a-kind propriety protein called Acell. This procedure can stop hair thinning and increase hair count, thickness, and growth speed.
With FUE transplant surgery, Dr. Amir Yazdan removes donor hair follicles from the sides and back of the scalp and relocates them on the top of the scalp where the hair loss has occurred. Dr. Yazdan uses micro-incisions to create sites to place each individual follicular unit, which will grow into a natural, undetectable pattern over the next year.

Dr. Amir Yazdan, MD, is an internationally renowned hair transplant surgeon, expert guest on Dr. Phil and The Doctors, creator of the GroMD hair restoration product line, ISHRS member, accredited member of the IAHRS and a visceral advocate for patient care. Learn more about Dr. Yazdan or read rave reviews from his patients.