Can Hair Loss Be Caused By Stress?

A scalp-obsessed curl specialist and healthy hair expert shares her take on hair loss and its mind-body connection after 17 years behind the chair.

This is the moment I always come back to when people ask me: Can stress really cause hair loss?

The answer is yes. And it's more complex than most people realize.I'll never forget the moment I knew something was wrong with one of my longtime clients.

She and I had worked together for over a year to get her hair to its healthiest state. Her once-fragile strands had almost fully recovered. We'd rejoice at each appointment—celebrating how long, thick, and transformed her hair had become.

Then one day, I touched her hair and immediately knew something was off.

I went over her routine and confirmed she was sticking to the plan. So I asked: "Has anything happened in the last few months that brought you stress or anxiety?"

She looked at me with tears in her eyes. Her brother had taken his life a few months prior.

She thought she was handling it well. She had a long history of grief within this family dynamic, so the loss felt hard but "normal"—it felt familiar. But her body was telling a different story.

When Trauma Shows Up in Your Hair

I explained to her that while her trauma response may have felt normal—because grief was familiar to her—her body was radiating stress at a cellular level. Her system was trained to shut down any "unnecessary strain" to reallocate energy toward surviving the trauma, even down to her hair follicles.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, in his groundbreaking book The Body Keeps the Score , explores how trauma physically rewires our bodies. He writes that traumatized people often feel chronically unsafe inside their own bodies—the past showing up as gnawing interior discomfort and constant visceral warning signs.

This isn't just poetic language—it's biological reality. Trauma gets stored in the body at a cellular level. The concept of "body memory" refers to the ways traumatic experiences become encoded in our tissues, manifesting as muscle tension, immune dysfunction, and yes—hair loss.

When cortisol levels remain elevated over time, they disrupt the signaling molecules that tell your hair follicles when to grow. Research from Harvard found that chronic stress hormones actually suppress a molecule called Gas6, which is critical for activating hair follicle stem cells. Without it, your follicles stay stuck in their resting phase—and the hair falls out.

What's Actually Happening in Your Body 

Here's the thing about stress and hair loss—everyone's body holds stress differently. We can't predict when stress will or won't affect your hair. We just know it does.

When your body experiences significant stress—whether it's sudden trauma, chronic burnout, pregnancy, illness, or grief—it triggers a cascade of hormonal responses. Your adrenal glands release cortisol, the primary stress hormone, which then sets off a chain reaction throughout your entire system.

What happens next is something called telogen effluvium—when stress pushes your hair follicles prematurely from their growing phase (anagen) into their resting phase (telogen). Normally, only about 15% of your hair is in the resting phase at any given time. Under significant stress, up to 70% of your hair can shift into this shedding phase.

Here's what makes this even more frustrating: you usually won't see the hair loss until 2-3 months after the stressful event. By then, many people have completely recovered from whatever triggered it and can't connect the dots.

The Self-Care Connection (And Why It Matters)

There's another layer to this that I see constantly in my chair: when we're stressed, our ability to care for ourselves tanks.

I've had countless clients come in expressing mental health distress that aligns perfectly with sudden shifts in their hair growth and density. It makes sense—when you're barely holding it together, washing and conditioning your hair properly isn't exactly top of mind.

An unhealthy scalp—one that's neglected, inflamed, or covered in buildup—plus environmental stress creates a perfect storm for disrupting your growth cycle.

What Your Scalp is Telling You About Your Hair Loss

Your scalp has a dense network of nerves, blood vessels, and muscles—making it especially sensitive to both physical and emotional tension. The galea aponeurotica, a fibrous layer covering the top of your skull, can hold onto tension without you even realizing it.

During a head spa consultation, I'm looking for signs that stress has taken up residence on your scalp: inflammation, lack of circulation, product buildup from decreased attention to care routines, and tension that's literally restricting blood flow to your follicles.

Signs your scalp might be under stress include tightness or tenderness (even when it looks "normal"), increased oiliness soon after washing, sensitivity or tingling sensations, and flaking or buildup that seems to appear out of nowhere.

The Biggest Misconception I Hear

"It's just stress—it'll grow back once things calm down."

I hear this constantly, and I need to be honest with you: life is hard. Stress is rarely temporary.

Stress can be followed by pregnancy, which can be followed by more trauma, which can be followed by health issues—and these things compound. Hair loss can accumulate. Things can snowball.

It's a much better approach to address hair loss early rather than waiting until its cumulative effects become visually obvious. Just because you can't see the loss yet doesn't mean it's not happening—the evidence is in your brush.

The Honest Timeline Talk

When someone comes to me panicking about shedding, here's what I tell them:

A hair growth cycle averages about 3 months. The changes we make today won't start to take effect until this current cycle is complete. Being preventive—stopping future hair loss—is where we should focus our energy.

What's already on its way out will fall out. That's just biology. But we can stop the snowball.

Start now and give yourself 6-12 months of a consistent hair loss protocol to assess its effectiveness. Patience isn't just a virtue here—it's a requirement.

What You Can Actually Do About Your Hair Loss Inducing Stress At Home

I'm not going to tell you to "just reduce stress." That's not helpful. Instead, here's what I actually recommend:

Adopt a daily breath practice. Even 10-15 minutes makes a difference. Slow, intentional breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system—the "rest and digest" mode that counters your body's stress response. Studies show this can actually reduce cortisol levels and improve heart rate variability, both of which affect your hair growth cycle. I offer breathwork sessions virtually and in person if you want guidance getting started" 

Get your body moving. Exercise helps regulate stress hormones and improve circulation to your scalp. Find an exercise you can  look  forward to. If you like it, you're much more likely to be consistent. I don’t care what workout is trendy, just move your body. One study found that just one hour of physical activity per week could prevent 12% of future depression cases."

Expose yourself to nature—particularly leafy trees and brush. This isn't woo-woo advice. Research shows that spending time among trees significantly decreases anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue while lowering cortisol levels and blood pressure. The Japanese call it "shinrin-yoku" (forest bathing), and even 15 minutes can make a measurable difference.

Journal to access your honest stress levels. We often bury ourselves in productivity, which keeps our mind disconnected from our body. Go on a walk or long drive—activities that give your mind the opportunity to wander. Record your thoughts via voice memo, then play it back and write about your feelings. When your mind becomes quiet, your subconscious can be heard.

Allow for emotional expression. Suppressed emotions don't disappear—they show up somewhere. Sometimes that somewhere is your hair. When you hold back what you're feeling, your body stays stuck in a stress response, cortisol stays elevated, and your system never gets the signal that it's safe to relax. Research shows that holding back emotional expression—what psychologists call "repressive coping"—weakens the immune system and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, anxiety, and depression. 

The act of crying, on the other hand, activates your parasympathetic nervous system, releases oxytocin and endorphins, and helps your body return to a state of calm. Studies have found that people who allowed themselves to cry during emotional experiences showed reduced cortisol levels compared to those who suppressed their emotions. Your feelings need somewhere to go. Scream into a pillow. 

Cry in the shower. Let it out in whatever way feels safe. The release isn't weakness—it's your body doing exactly what it's designed to do." 

Seek guidance and support from peers and/or professionals. You don't have to figure this out alone. Processing with a witness deepens your sense of what's real and not real, and allows for deeper healing and connects your subconscious to the reality of support. 

Where Breathwork and Sound Healing Fit In

This might seem like an unusual thing for a hair stylist to talk about, but I've expanded my practice to include breathwork facilitation and sound healing for a reason.

Breathwork and sound calm the nervous system, allowing your body and sympathetic nervous system to find their way out of fight-or-flight mode. It's a way for you to take control of stress's effects on your body—attuning to your nervous system, creating a mind-body connection so you can prevent future stress from having as great an impact.

When you become aware of your subconscious realities—the tension you're holding, the stress your body is processing even when your mind thinks everything is "fine"—you can actually do something about it.

And yes, I've seen clients experience real improvements in their hair when they address stress through these modalities alongside their salon treatments.

When to See a Professional

I refer clients to medical professionals when the stress is related to long-term systemic lifestyle realities, when medications are required to manage stress or related conditions, or when salon-professional products have proven not to have an effect.

There's no shame in needing more support than what I can offer in my chair. Hair loss can be a symptom of something bigger, and getting the right help matters.

"Here's something I've learned from my own stress journey that informs how I talk to clients about this:

There's a lot of shame around self-care—or lack of it—particularly around depression, stress, and trauma.

When something starts to affect your mental capacity to hold yourself to your "normal" standard of self-care, it can spiral. We shame ourselves. We let perceived societal expectations become reasons to hold guilt. And that shame often prolongs the effects of hair loss because the loss of routine and care is hard to regain from a place of guilt.

Shame is detrimental to your long-term success. The reality is—you are human. It's normal to feel stress, be inconsistent at times, and lose focus.

Don't read this blog and use it as an excuse to beat yourself up for being human. Use it as a catalyst to understanding that hair loss is a normal aspect of life. It's your choice to assign importance to it. If you find it problematic to see its reality, know you have support and options. Myself and many other professionals dedicate ourselves to minimizing the natural reality of hair fallout.

You being here reading this is you doing something. That's progress. Information gathering to make an informed choice about next steps is self-care.

You are doing great. Remind yourself of that."

It's okay to not always have the will to perfectly care for yourself.

This is what professionals are for. If your hair loss is related to stress and a loss of quality self-care, this is when it's ideal to give yourself permission to seek help—to let someone else pick up where you left off.

Know that it's normal to not always be able to do it all.

Your hair loss is one of your body's ways of telling you that your mind and body are doing too much.

Let's Talk About Your Hair (And Everything Else)

If any of this resonates with you—if you've been watching more hair go down the drain, if you've been through something hard and your body is showing the signs—I want you to know: you're not imagining it, and you don't have to figure it out alone.

At Wild Soul Salon & Head Spa I take a scalp-first approach to hair health. Every appointment starts with a comprehensive consultation to explore the human aspect affecting your scalp and hair health needs—because the two are more connected than most people realize.

Book a Head Spa Experience and let's talk about your hair, your scalp, and whatever else you need to get out of your head. I'm here for all of it

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Jackie Wilt | Curl Specialist & Healthy Hair Expert | Wild Soul Salon & Head Spa, Denver