With finals and exams coming up, I think it’s safe to say everyone is pretty stressed out—including myself. I am always stressing about things, whether it’s worth it or not. I can’t help it. Once I get something in my head, I can’t seem to get rid of it and probably end up stressing more than getting my actual tasks accomplished. As I was stressing last night over things due on Friday and things assigned for Monday, I wondered if my stress affects me in any way. Because I stress out so often, I decided to do some research on stress. The first thing I came across was “Stress causes hair loss.” Honestly, this would make sense for me because my hair has definitely gotten thinner over the years! So, I decided to stick with this question: Does stress cause hair loss?
Here, the null hypothesis would be that stress and hair loss have no correlation. And it would also deny the fact that stress and hair loss have nothing to do with each other. The alternative hypothesis would be that stress does, in fact, cause hair loss.
Right away, I was given an answer to my question. Stress does apparently cause hair to fall out. Studies have shown that people who do not stress as much will probably not notice any significant difference. They might notice a few hairs falling out, but not enough to start asking questions. According to hair loss and care, stress causes a person’s body systems to start working incorrectly. Blood vessels on a person’s scalp experience involuntary muscle contractions and do not nurture the hair follicles with the needed amount of blood. As stated earlier, prolonged stress will then lead to hair loss. The sources also mentioned that stress prevents the hair from growing healthy and strong.
Although stress can definitely cause hair loss, it is not the only thing that can. I think the fact that stress is not the only thing that causes hair loss is pretty well known, but other problems might include: shortage of vitamins and minerals, bad habits (ex: smoking), blood circulation disease, etc.
For those of you that stress often, and might have noticed hair loss, there is no way to truly prevent it. One source mentions that if you are able to reduce the amount of time that you stress, your hair might stop falling out so often. There are also remedies that could be used to help your hair regain its strength. Some things include: Avoid washing your hair everyday, do not use hairdryers, do not brush your hair when it is wet, don’t wear tight hairdos, and avoid excessive sun exposure.
After reading up on hair loss, I found a lot of reasons that relate to me. I am constantly stressing, and as I mentioned earlier, it has only been over the past few years that my hair has gotten thinner. I also was an avid user of sun in. I used sun in to lighten my hair in the summer, and this is definitely a main contributor to my hair loss, according to my sources.
So, there is a lot you can do to prevent your hair from thinning and falling out from stress. Although we cannot help it sometimes, taking deep breaths and realizing that stress won’t solve our problems might help reduce hair loss. After reading, I am definitely going to be using some of the remedies recommended for my hair thinning. And, I will also try to avoid stressing in general—especially this week!
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I have extremely thick curly hair and I had always wondered if my hair could possibly get thinner. Anyway, I like this post because I have heard that stress is correlated to hair loss. I like how you stated the hypotheses and I assumed the alternate would be right in the end. Check out this article on hair loss and stress that I found.
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003246.htm
I relate to this completely. Since high school and throughout college so far I have been extremely stressed. About a year or two ago, I noticed that my hair has gotten extremely thin, and I finally made the connection between the two. Although I have never tried it, biotin is supposedly good for thinning hair. Here is an article of people discussing how the vitamin helped their hair.
This was a good article. I recently saw a picture of Barack Obama that compared him from when he initially took office in 2008 to today. While he did naturally age eighth years, the stress of the presidency undoubtedly took its toll on the president. I thought this topic would be interesting when I read the headline, and I assumed the alternative hypothesis was correct when you stated it. Stress is bad for people in many ways. It effects your mood, health, hair, and way more. Here is a link to a good article talking about how stress really affects a person:
http://www.healthline.com/health/stress/effects-on-body