Thursday, April 30, 2009

Hair Loss Health Damaged by Stress or Hardship?

You able to spend all day long, looking in different forums about hair loss health. They'll all say the same thing I am getting ready to tell you.

Yes, physical stress plays a major role in hair loss, but mental health, ranks right behind it as a factor in the health of your hair. Hair Loss Caused By Physical Stress: There's absolutely no question that physical stress and illness can lead to hair loss. One hair loss condition that fits into this category's called telogen effluvium, or TE. Telogen Effluvium, occurs when sudden or severe stress causes an increase in the shedding of the hair.

Temporary hair loss can be caused by:

Child Birth Pregnancy Termination's Starting or Stopping Birth Control Pills Dieting Drug Therapy Severe Emotional Stress changing your medications.

Definately check the side effects, for any medication you are on. Hair loss might be one of the effects listed.

Another cause of hair loss is androgenic alopecia, or thinning caused by DHT. Androgenetic alopecia, commonly called male or female pattern baldness, was exclusively partially understood until the last few decades.

For numerous years, scientists thought that androgenetic alopecia was caused by the predominance of the male sex hormone, testosterone, which women have in trace amounts under normal conditions. While testosterone is at the core of the balding process, DHT is thought to be the main culprit.

Testosterone converts to DHT with the aid of the enzyme Type II 5-alpha reductase, which is held in a hair follicle's oil glands. I cognize that was a mouthful, but I want you to be able to look this stuff up if you so desire. Scientists now believe that it's not the amount of circulating testosterone that's the problem but the level of DHT binding to receptors in scalp follicles.

DHT shrinks hair follicles, making it impossible for healthy hair to survive.

The Mind / Body Connection: Although specialists will tell you that mental or psychological stress does not cause hair shedding or loss, I disagree.

I've heard many individuals tell stories of this to discount it. But, what I believe happens is that the mental stress actually translates to physical changes in your body.

For example, when you are under a great deal of hardship or anxiety, your body pumps out cortisol like mad. This can affect your thyroid and adrenal hormones and can also produce more androgens. So, now what started out as mental is effecting you physically and now you have two potential causes of hair loss - changes in hormones and increased androgens.

So, while great old mental turmoil might not affect your hair directly, it can affect your body, it's hormones, and your scalp which in turn affects your hair.

Treating Stress Induced Hair Loss: Obviously, the first treatment for this is going to be to decrease your stress. This is often easier said than done though.

If you seek A hair loss health treatment, make sure it has some type of vitamin supplement to go with it. Your hair requires nutrients also, just like your body, when not up to par.

How do I know all of this? Because I lived it. In my quest to end my hair loss, I looked at my triggers, my iron, my thyroid, my adrenals, my hormones, and my scalp's health in my quest to end the nightmare. It was a long, hard, frustrating journey which all but wrecked my self esteem but I finally found something that helped quite a bit.

I hope you are as lucky.

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