Winter stress and how it can impact our hair

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SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

The Hard Shoulder with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman on Newstalk with Kea.

Ciara Kelly (1:08)

Now, stress can impact many areas of our overall health, but what effect does it have on your hair? Well, joining us to discuss this is Dr. Doireann O'Leary, Doctor, Founder and CEO of At Supplements Made Simple. Doireann, thanks indeed for talking to us. Is winter harder on our hair than other seasons?

Doireann O'Leary (1:27)

Winter can certainly be more stressful on our hair.

One of the reasons being, like you mentioned, it's cough, cold, flu and COVID season.

And any illness, particularly an illness that can cause a fever can induce a type of hair loss called telogen effluvium, where you can actually see hair shedding two or three months after the illness or the stressful event. So telogen effluvium can be precipitated by a physical stress like a viral illness with a fever. A lot of people saw it after COVID or after, you know, another physical stress would be going for surgery. But psychological stress can very much cause it as well. And one of the most common situations that I would see would be hair shedding two to three months after somebody has lost somebody. So grief, a lot of people can see hair loss in the two to three months after that. Yeah, that's very common. But the good news is that telogen effluvium is a temporary, reversible type of hair loss. So in time, it will get better. People can get very upset about it. They start to see a lot of hair coming out in the shower, coming out in clumps in their hairbrush. And they start to notice hair thinning. But telogen effluvium is temporary. So it will come back in time by itself.

Ciara Kelly (2:47)

Are there things you can do to prevent winter shedding?

Doireann O'Leary (2:52)

Well, I suppose the winter shed, if it's induced by a viral illness, it's back to our good old tips and tricks that we learned during COVID. You know, getting your flu vaccine, COVID vaccine, if advised by your doctor, hand hygiene, cough and sneeze etiquette. I've been trying to drill it in to my kids. Cough in a cave, catching your germs, cough it, kill it, sneezing in to a tissue, et cetera.

And I suppose the other thing then in winter is the vitamin D. That's a huge thing in Ireland. You know, we're all at risk of vitamin D deficiency, particularly from October to March. And you know, the HSE, if they're messaging now that everyone needs to be taking their vitamin D supplement. And of course, nutritional deficiencies can contribute to hair loss and hair thinning as well. So just watch out for your vitamin D as well for winter.

Ciara Kelly (3:39)

What about washing your hair? Is that good or bad in terms of hair loss? Like frequent washing of your hair?

Doireann O'Leary (3:45)

It's very good. And a lot of people, when they see hair coming out in the shower, they think that the hair washing is causing the hair to come out. And that's not the case at all. That hair has already come out anyway. You're just now seeing it kind of fall out in the shower, if you like. And so you have to have a healthy scalp to have healthy hair. You know, your hair grows out of your scalp. So keeping your scalp clean is the key to a healthy head of hair. And some research shows that it's actually healthiest to wash your hair up to four or five times a week. Now, listen, I think for most women with thick long hair and obviously men have long heads of hair as well, it's not realistic to fit it in four or five times a week for many people.