My dad is bald, so naturally I am hoping baldness skips a generation, but what if it doesn’t? What if there is an alternative factor of why people go bald? So I thought I would research it.

Being a sophomore at Penn State I have had classes with seniors and have seen plenty walk around and I have noticed that while none of my sophomore friends are bald only three years from now I will be a senior and I am just hoping that I won’t be bald. But with all the exams and classes I have I wondered whether or not this level of stress was contributing to the seniors hair loss, simply because they have dealt with four years of it. Well the answer I find is yes. 

There are three types of hair loss that involve stress, they are known as Telogen effluvium, trichotillomania, and alopecia areata. Each does something different to your hair but seemingly has the same result.

Telogen effluvium is when the stress makes your hair shift into a resting place and therefore when someone washes their hair they are in a state of “rest” and will fall out

Trichotillomania is what you see in many commercials with a man screaming and pulling his hair out. Trichotillomania forces you to pull your hair due to stress and begins to settle in between the ages of nine and thirteen years old. By the time someone is 22 years old and finishing up college, the amount of stress that has built up throughout high school and college plus the stress of looking for a job in the real world after graduation could easily make people with trichotillomania lose more and more hair.

Lastly there is alopecia areata, which is a disease that causes the immune system to essentially attacks the hair follicles. This creates immediate balding.

However, it is possible that people just go bald because of genetics or other reasons. Hair loss can occur inexplicably and for no real reason, almost the same way that people who can smoke for 50 years may live until they are 100 years old. If there are ways to prevent hair loss then maybe no one truly knows why or how hair loss happens. Or maybe if you do lose your hair, just get it back with science, like Bosley. Stressed people may lose hair, but so do people who are not stressed, this could all just be due to chance. There are supposedly ways to lose hair, but there are always ways to prevent it, as well as get it back. So while it is possible for stress to be linked to hair loss, there are other potential factors in hair loss so really… who knows?

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/stress-management/expert-answers/stress-and-hair-loss/faq-20057820

http://www.webmd.com/beauty/hair-health-11/hair-stress-effect

http://stress.about.com/od/otherconditions/a/22707hair_loss.htm

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=77871

http://www.wikihow.com/Prevent-Hair-Loss

http://www.bosley.com/