At some point of her life, every woman might face hair loss. It can be very mild seasonal (in spring or early fall), postpartal, postmenopausal, hormonal, furthermore usually itchy scarring alopecia, sudden alopecia areata or progressive androgenetic alopecia. Very often we can hear at our office how patient reveal that stress is causing their hair loss or they have noticed a dramatic hair shedding after a very stressful life event. In order to explore different factors associated with hair loss, a study was done on monozygotic female twins at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. These are some factors that showed a significant effect in hair loss in two women with the same set of gens but different life circumstances.
- More children cause more hair loss. Not to discourage moms to have more children but apparently more hair loss comes with more kids.
- Divorce or separation is on the very top of the list of the most stressful life events so it is not a surprise that it ranks high in risks for contributing in one’s hair loss.
- Multiple marriages are following divorce in the level of stress contributing to hair loss. Every new relationship, besides the love as the most beautiful feeling one can have, brings lots of changes into woman’s life. Change of a partner, change of a home, change of daily habits as many other things is something woman does not take into consideration as a source of her masked stress.
- Lack of exercise is to blame for many health conditions as well as for our own wellbeing. It has a role in hair loss as well.
- High income also ranks high on the list of risks for hair loss. It may surprise many because money can buy almost everything including the latest, cutting-edge treatments for hair loss, but it seems that high income evidently comes with lots of stress due to work and it results with more hair loss.
- Longer sleep duration. According to this study, women who sleep longer tend to lose more hair.
- Lack of hat use is pretty obvious a potential factor for hair loss. Scalp skin should be treated as any other skin and therefore protected of the sun. Otherwise, scalp might be burned and this affects hair follicles.
- Smoking is mentioned as a contributing risky factor for many conditions. The way how it primarily might cause hair loss is with lowering the amount of oxygen transported by blood to hair follicles.
- Less coffee-more hair loss. Twins that consumed less coffee faced more hair loss as caffeine causes vasodilatation (opening of blood vessels and better blood supply).
- General conditions such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cancer and polycystic ovarian syndrome were associated with increased hair thinning from long ago.
- History of skin disease contributes to hair loss. People with sensitive skin very often have sensitive hair prone to shedding.
This interesting study gives an insight into some reasons for hair loss that we don’t think much about. The way we live affects us in very subtle ways that we miss to feel oftentimes but our hair might not miss to reflect it.