Feeling stressed? This Stress Awareness Month gives your hair and you the mental health boost you deserve. Stress can be troublesome for your beautiful locks, but here are some ways to chill out, help your hair, and give yourself a break.

The science behind stress and hair growth

Stress can take a significant toll on your health, including physical changes. Stress hormones are released whenever you're under stress. Even something positive like planning your wedding, crushing it at work, or the holiday season can leave your strands stressed. 

While stress and cortisol, the stress hormone, can be hard on your body in many ways, let's take a look at how it affects your hair.

• Thinning hair. This is the most extreme result of cortisol interrupting the hair growth cycle. This causes funneling nutrition to other, more essential, parts of your fight or flight responses.
• Trigger telogen effluvium. Stress can have a significant impact on our hair health, often leading to a phase of resting known as telogen effluvium, characterized by hair shedding. When experiencing stress, your body can enter a state where more hair follicles than usual enter the resting phase of the hair growth cycle (telogen phase).
• Hair breakage. A slightly less dramatic issue than hair thinning, but improper nutrition due to stress and cortisol can cause your hair to break.
• Dehydration. Stress is known to dehydrate skin and hair. Add to that the fact that you might not be paying attention to your body’s hydration needs, and your hair and scalp will show the results.    
• Nutritional deficits. Even if you’re eating correctly, stress can zap the nutrition that would typically fuel healthy skin, hair, and nails and use it elsewhere. But let’s face it, you’re not always eating right when you’re stressed.

Types of stress-related hair issues

When stress hits hard, our hair can sometimes bear the brunt of it. Have you ever noticed your hair thinning or shedding more than usual during stressful times? That's because stress hormones can mess with our hair growth cycle, causing more hairs than normal to enter the resting phase and eventually fall out, sometimes in patchy patterns.

Plus, stress can also lead to premature graying or leave our hair looking generally dull and lifeless, robbing it of its usual shine and luster. But, luckily understanding how stress affects our hair can help you take better care of it during tough times!

Ways to support hair health

If you want to put a little focus on hair health when you’re feeling stressed, the following tips will help you do just that.

• Hydration. Load up on fluids when you’re feeling stressed out. Even not drinking water enough creates stress for your body. Make sure you’re consuming liquids all day long.
• Nutrition. Eating right is essential when you’re battling stress and when you want great hair. That said, we know it can be hard to get all the nutrition you and your hair need for optimal health. That’s why we created Clinical Formula Hair Vitamins. While these supplements focus on hair health, they also support complete body health and can fill in some gaps in your nutritional intake for all-over beauty and wellness.

• Practice de-stressing techniques. Learn how to recognize your individual stress responses, and then develop coping and relaxation skills that help you overcome stress before it gets overwhelming.

Managing stress for healthy hair growth

So, what are those de-stressing techniques? These tips will get you feeling better overall. It’s important to help your hair, but it’s even more important to nurture your soul.

• Change your environment. Some places (like our desks) are associated with stress. We sit there, and we feel stressed. Getting up and moving to another place can be all you need.  
      
• Exercise. If you’re feeling stressed to the max, put down what you’re doing and go for a walk. It could just be a quick 10-minute break, but it can help you put things in perspective and promote blood circulation, bringing nutrients and oxygen to the scalp. 
    
• Meditation and gratitude. Spending just a few conscious minutes relaxing, deep breathing, and being grateful for the good in your life can help fade the stress.
     
• Let it out. Just talking about what is giving you stress can help you feel better about it. Whether you’re chatting with another person or maybe listing your stresses out loud to yourself, there is definitely a benefit to be found.
       
• Treat yourself. How do you treat yourself while still being mindful of your health? Is it taking a bath and giving your hair a nice oil treatment? Or do you like to dance, draw, or garden? Whatever it is that you see as a treat, nourish that part of yourself.

Reversing stress-induced hair changes

The good news? Once we get a handle on stress, our hair can bounce back. Managing stress effectively can create the right environment for hair recovery. It's like giving your hair a chance to reset. Generally, after reducing stress levels, you might start noticing improvements in hair health within a few weeks to a couple of months.

Of course, everyone's hair journey is different, but staying consistent with stress management techniques can speed up the process. 

Final thoughts

This is Stress Awareness Month, and it’s the perfect time to take stock of the stress in your life. Stress can be incredibly damaging to your entire being, not just your hair. Being aware of what stresses you out is the first step in learning how to cope with it or how to remove it from your life. 

Changing your diet is a big step in the right direction. Adding vitamins and a nourishing hair serum gives you a head start on hair health. Clinical Formula Hair Vitamins are a blend of vitamins, nutrients, and antioxidants that support healthier hair through whole-body wellness. So, you won’t only be promoting beautiful hair, but you’ll start feeling it, too.