According to The American Institute of Stress: About 33 percent of people report feeling extreme stress. 77 percent of people experience stress that affects their physical health. 73 percent of people have stress that impacts their mental health.

More and more people are experiencing hair loss due to stress than ever before.

How Does Stress Affect Hair Loss?

In telogen effluvium (TEL-o-jun uh-FLOO-vee-um), significant stress pushes large numbers of hair follicles into a resting phase. Within a few months, affected hairs might fall out suddenly when simply combing or washing your hair.

How Can Stress Lead To Hair Loss?

Excessive physical or emotional stress—like that associated with injury, illness, or surgery—can cause one of two types of hair loss:

• Alopecia areata: This stress-induced hair loss involves a white blood cell attack on the hair follicles. With this type of hair loss, the hair also falls out within weeks (usually in patches), but can involve the entire scalp and even body hair. Hair may grow back on its own, but treatment may also be required.
  
  
• Telogen effluvium: With this more common and less severe type of hair loss, the hair stops growing and lies dormant, only to fall out 2 or 3 months later. Then it grows back within 6 to 9 months.

If your daily hair fall is more than the usual 80-100 strands of hair, you might be suffering from stress-related hair loss. Stress-related hair loss (telogen effluvium) can happen from stress at work, relationships, to post-Covid recovery.

While it is not uncommon for up to 50% of scalp hair to be shed during a telogen effluvium, this condition, reassuringly, does not cause complete baldness. The other good news? The hair loss is temporary, and should return to its pre-effluvium density, although this process is generally slow.

When we asked Dr. Lawrence A. Schiffman, a dermatologists based out of Miami (from the Miami Skin Dr practice,) he told DS Laboratories, “...there has been a huge uptick in stress related hair loss in my practice many patients who have been stressed with the lockdowns and the anxiety over Covid have lost hair known as telogen if luteum in addition many patients who have suffered from Covid are presenting 3 to 6 months after infection with telogen effluvium hair loss there are treatments to improve the volume and improve the growth rate of hair following these types of conditions"

We also spoke to the Florida Skin Center, a dermatology practice who see thousands of patients a year. When we asked what has been the main culprit of patients with stress-related hair loss, they said, ”Several types of stressors can cause hair shedding. These can include environmental stressors such as losing a job, and physical stressors such as having an illness. The pandemic has led to both types of stressors. It is not uncommon for a patient to experience hair loss after having recovered from COVID-19.”

When asked if stress-related hair loss can be treated, they said, “...there are a variety of treatment options that can be used to help encourage regrowth from stress-related hair loss. This type of hair loss is typically successfully treated with full regrowth after a few months of treatment.”