Stress and Hair Loss
Stress
a modern day problem can be blamed for all types of illnesses, and hair loss is
no exception to this.
Introduction
Your hair has a way of telling you if your body is in
balance.
If you are healthy - physically as well as
emotionally - your hair will be radiant and shining and your scalp
pliant and moist.
If you are not well physically, or if you are upset
emotionally, your hair becomes dull and lifeless - it will begin to fall
out, and your hair will become waxy with the overproduction of your
traumatised sebaceous glands.
Truly, any major change in our lives can be reflected
in the condition of our hair, scalp and skin.
If we are well and happy,
we reflect this health and well-being in the condition of our hair and
scalp.
If we are in a slump, that slump is often manifested in the
appearance of our hair and scalp.
We need stress, we need it to become vital, ambitious
and sexually active people. However we also need the ability to cope
with stress when it threatens to overwhelm us.
Besides which without stress, we would become
lethargic and depressed.
Defining Stress
Stress is very difficult to describe, few people will
say the same thing about it and very few people ever agree what causes
it.
The Oxford dictionary's definition of stress is
"that stress is a demand upon physical or mental energy".
However what we usually mean by stress is an
excessive demand upon our energy, one that we find hard to cope with,
which calls on our reserves and which cannot be sustained indefinitely
without relief.
Stress appears to be a product of modern day life,
however it was in existence centuries ago, although it did not have the
same press coverage it demands today.
Stress can be defined in a variety of ways:
Stress is feeling bad, due to troubles beyond our control.
The reaction of the mind and body to change.
Stress is everywhere and seems to be a recent phenomenon.
Stress is unpleasant and has little to do with happy events.
Stress is related to change.
There again you could reject all of the above and say
stress does not exist but is merely a scapegoat for all of modern day
problems!
Cure
The best possible way of reducing stress is to
identify the cause and remove it.
This is not always possible but if you
do know the cause of stress and you do not try to do something about it,
you will only succeed in increasing the problem.
Thus causing you to
become more stressed!!
Work and money problems are two of the bigger
problems of stress. One of the best ways of helping to find and cure the
problem is to devise a list of all your problems and try to resolve all
the items over a certain time span.
Stress can be habit forming and, as such, it is often
triggered without thought. Worrying about whether you will lose your
job, for instance, is an example of a stressful situation that may be
triggered by groundless fears.
It is important to recognise such
substance less anxieties for whatever they are, for although the
situation is imagined, the consequences are real.
Rumours to the contrary, there is little concrete
medical evidence that stress - regardless of its origin - actually
contributes to balding it just seems that way.
However this statement
could be applied to any condition that may be blamed on stress and even
though it is not directly the cause of the problem, hair loss does
appear to be a side effect of stress.
The truth of the matter is that when we are under
stress, we let our basic health habits go. Just think about this.
You have a deadline to meet for an important project
at work. Your boss has virtually told you your job is on the line. How
do you react?
First of all, you start drinking more coffee and soft
drinks than usual, and if you're still a smoker, you start smoking more
than ever.
By doing this, you increase the poisons from nicotine and
caffeine in your body, taking in far larger quantities than when you are
not under such pressure.
Then you work all hours, rushing into work without
breakfast in the morning, and if you eat lunch at all, you gulp down
some fast food from a take-away.
You get no exercise, other than rushing from place to
place and sleep irregular hours.
More than likely, you don't pay a lot
of attention to your face, you may touch it with ink-stained hands, you
run your fingers through your hair and then rest your chin on your hand,
transferring the oils and dirt from one to the other.
You give your hair
a quick washing, paying little attention to conditioning or rinsing, if
you wash your hair at all.
In no time your skin becomes shallow and
sensitive. Your hair becomes dull and lifeless, and before you know it,
it is falling out in bunches.
This is not caused directly by stress, but
by what you have done to your body while you are under stress.
Your hair is one of the first places your body shows
distress. Illness, medication and imbalances in nutrition all show up in
you hair and scalp.
Even aspirins and over the counter allergy pills or
cold tablets can have a negative effect on your hair, especially if your
hair is chemically treated with colour or a permanent rinse.
However as we have already seen when we are excited
or frightened our hair can actually stand on its end, thus showing how
our nervous system is interrelated with our hair and skin.
So if we can
do anything to reduce stress it can only do us good.
There is quite a lot of evidence to show that a
moderate degree of stress can be good for us - it improves performance,
efficiency, productivity and many people strive on it.
Indeed there are
people who need stress, and function at maximum efficiency when they are
under stress, but they are rare.
For most people, if stress goes beyond a certain
point, everything disinteregates, and this can lead to both mental and
physical illness.
It is therefore, very important for us to come to
terms with what causes stress, to recognise the part that it plays in
our health, or, conversely, ill health, and try to find out how we can
get rid of it or cope with it.
The most important thing of all is that you cope with
stress, it's much less important how you cope with it.
In the long term, however, you must teach yourself to
handle stress positively. One of the problems in a high stress situation
is that your self-confidence is reduced.
You remember your failures,
think of your inadequacies, you become negative, when you really need to
be positive.
Positive thinking itself can be a great healer and can
achieve remarkable results when used properly.
If stress can't be avoided, try one or all of the
techniques listed below.
Dissociate
This means putting your worries out of your head.
Some people can do this easier than others.
Try to ignore the problem
for as long as possible, the longer you ignore it, the more time there
is for the body's fight and flight reaction to lessen, thereby reducing
stress and anxiety.
Have Fun
Go out and enjoy yourself, laugh and have fun, go to
parties and cheer yourself up. While you are having fun, and even after,
you will notice how most problems will diminish in size.
Physical Activity
Work off stress through any type of exercise that you
enjoy and are physically able to do.
Physical activity of any kind
always counteracts the effects of stress and will usually leave you
feeling relaxed and rational about your problems.
Relax
Relaxation is a great way to fight stress. Try to lie
down in a quiet place for twenty minutes each day in a darkened room,
let nothing disturb you and just concentrate on feeling good about
yourself.
Another good exercise is to try to get ten hours sleep each
night for a whole week. If you can manage this for a complete week you
should feel a whole lot better.
Problems with work, money and daily life in the
nineties are taking its toll and some of the symptoms show themselves in
different ways in different people.
Unfortunately one of the most common
symptoms is excessive hair falling out and general thinning.
This
problem is not unique to men, the symptoms can affect females just as
easily. Reducing stress is easier said than done but some of the causes
and cures are outlined below.
The focus of stress is often in the mind rather than
in the body. There are many ways in which stress can show itself. It is
particularly difficult to adjust to severe changes if they catch us
unprepared.
Exercise
Exercise is a particularly effective way to relieve
stress, it keeps your body fit and able to cope with stress more easily.
Try to participate in a sport or activity that you really enjoy and give
it your full concentration.
Relaxation
To have a period of relaxation where you turn your
mind off to everything can have a very therapeutic effect.
Try and lie
down in a darkened room for half an hour a day with no disturbances and
no sound at all. As you are lying there just try and think of nothing or
only good things that have happened to you, it will take a while to get
used to doing nothing for half an hour but the benefits will be
noticeable to you.
Stress can be relieved by slowing down rather than
speeding up.
Slowing down can be achieved by talking to people, taking
pills, learning to relax, doing special exercises such as yoga and
meditation, having a holiday or just taking it easy for a couple of
days.
Sleep
Relaxation and exercise will also help you sleep at
night. Everyone knows how much sleep they need, so try and get it.
Too
little or too much sleep affects our lives, leading to health problems
and the results can cause deterioration in the appearance of your hair
and skin.
Diet
Just as the residue from drugs and medication and all
the other negative things that we put in our bodies show up in our hair,
the positive results of nutritional care are evidenced there also.
There
are no magic pills we can take or miracle foods we can eat to have
healthy hair, but we can feed our hair and scalp by eating the foods
that promote physical health and well being.
We must achieve a balance among the essential
nutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates, as well as vitamins and
minerals, to achieve a healthy, balanced body.
We need to eat a variety of foods in each of these
groups for maximum health. Only one-fifth of our daily protein intake
should come from meats, including fish and poultry.
Food rich in the B vitamins (green vegetables, whole
grains, liver, peas and beans, fish, cheese and eggs), vitamin A
(spinach, broccoli, tomatoes parsnips and melons) and vitamin C (citrus
fruits, tomatoes and strawberries) are vital to the health and well
being of your hair and scalp, as are calcium rich foods such as canned
fish, cheese, yoghurt and oysters.
Other minerals that contribute to full rich hair are
zinc (in mussels, nuts, brewer's yeast, wheat germ and whole grains)
iodine (in seafood, sea salt and onions) and sulphur (in eggs , fish,
garlic, onions and cabbage).
Avoid foods that are high in oils and fats - red
meats, fried foods, most nuts and nut products - and limit your intake
of shellfish and iodised salt because they contain too much iodine.
Iodine does help hair growth, but too much can cause acne.
Chocolate and cocoa product, cheese, sugar, coffee
and tea, as well as alcohol, should be eliminated or at least
restricted, because they can trigger systematic problems that upset the
delicate balance between your hair and its environment, the scalp.
The chemical content of the hair is so drastically
altered by pollutants that the real nutritional effects of the diet can
be lost unless we can reach and maintain that wonderful, delicate
balance.
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