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Losing Your Hair Can Be Another Consequence of the Pandemic - The New York Times

Losing Your Hair Can Be Another Consequence of the Pandemic - The New York Times

Losing Your Hair Can Be Another Consequence of the Pandemic - The New York Times
Sep 24, 2020 2 mins, 7 secs

Doctors are seeing a huge increase in patients who have been shedding abnormal amounts of hair, and they believe it is related to stress associated with the coronavirus.

Many said that several months after contracting the virus, they began shedding startling amounts of hair.

Doctors say they too are seeing many more patients with hair loss, a phenomenon they believe is indeed related to the coronavirus pandemic, affecting both people who had the virus and those who never became sick.

Now, doctors say, many patients recovering from Covid-19 are experiencing hair loss — not from the virus itself, but from the physiological stress of fighting it off.

“There’s many, many stresses in many ways surrounding this pandemic, and we’re still seeing hair loss because a lot of the stress hasn’t gone away,” said Dr.

Emma Guttman-Yassky, the incoming chairwoman of the dermatology department at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, said she has treated many frontline medical workers for hair loss, including her hospital’s employees.

It essentially involves a shifting or “tripping of the hair growth system,” said Dr.

Khetarpal said, and up to 50 percent of hair might skip ahead to the shedding phase, with only about 40 percent in the growth phase.

The other hair loss condition that is increasing now is alopecia areata, in which the immune system attacks hair follicles, usually starting with a patch of hair on the scalp or beard, said Dr.

Not all of the patients had Covid-19, she said, but the ones who did tended to progress very quickly from one or two bald patches to “losing hair all over the body,” including eyebrows and eyelashes.

The hair loss itself can cause more stress, Dr.

She was hospitalized for Covid-19 for eight days in the early spring and later noticed that “my hair started coming out in chunks,” she said.

He said, ‘I think I have a different wife.’ It was very depressing.” She said she has finally begun to detect some hair growth.

Hogan warns patients that it can initially cause more hair loss before it starts working.

When Liz Weidhorn, 44, of Fair Lawn, N.J., who tested positive for Covid-19 in March, noticed members of an online Covid group bemoaning hair loss, she told herself that if it happened to her, “I will take it with grace and I’ll get a kick-ass hat,” she recalled.

Hogan said some patients find the situation so upsetting they avoided washing or brushing their hair because they noticed the hair loss more during those activities

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