Stress Smoking and Hair Loss

Almost everybody has to deal with stress on a day-to-day basis. From the baby trying to call an adult's attention, to the working head of the family trying to bring food to the dinner table, we all deal with stress in our own ways.

On a positive note, stress has its beneficial effects. It can sometimes give us an extra energy boost to accomplish tasks and helps keep us focused. However, when it becomes too much to handle, people start manifesting various psychological and physical symptoms of being overstressed. One of the many physical manifestations of being stressed is hair loss.

If you're thinking hair loss in the sense that they just start falling off on their own. That isn't the case. It is because when one is stressed, they get into habits that lead to hair loss and thinning.

One of the many habits stressed out people have is smoking. Smoking changes the way the body grows hair and restores the scalp. Smoking increases the amount of DHT or dihydrotestosterone in the hair follicles by 13%, and increases testosterone levels by 9%. Together, these two hormones increase the amount of hair lost and the rate it is lost.

Aside from aiding in the production of hormones that speed up hair loss, smoking also makes the blood vessels in the scalp constrict, thereby impeding the blood flow to the scalp. To add to that, carbon monoxide in the smoke you inhale interferes with the blood's oxygen carrying ability, making it even more difficult for fresh blood to get to the scalp to avoid further hair loss.

Smoking is just one of the many bad habits we turn to when we're pressured and stressed, there are still a lot more stress habits that could cause your hair loss. Would you still want to keep smoking after knowing that it's causing your baldness?