Last updated on October 7, 2020
Question:
About four months ago I was really stressed out about a lot of stuff. Due to this stress, I experienced some hair thinning or loss. It’s recently started to grow back a little bit, and I was wondering if it will all grow back to its original thickness. Will masturbation stop it from growing back?
Answer:
Everyone’s hair follicles operate in cycles where hair grows for a period of time and then the follicles rest. During the rest period, the hair falls out. In animals, this rest period comes to all the follicles at once, which leads to shedding. In humans, the individual follicles rest on staggered cycles, so only a few hairs are lost at any particular time. Thus, this is why the hair on your arms and legs stay relatively short. The follicles rest more often, so the hairs fall out before they get very long.
Stress can release hormones that cause a larger-than-usual number of hair follicles to go into a rest state. The scientific name for this is telogen effluvium. Once the stress is gone, the hair follicles resume their normal cycles, but the rest state can last for several months. Depending on the severity of stress and its duration, it can take six months to a year for all the hair follicles to resume their normal cycles and for enough hair growth to take place that it no longer looks thin.
Masturbation has nothing to do with hair loss. It is a myth due to the fact that males tend to lose hair because of testosterone and just about all men masturbate. But the masturbation is due to the fact that males manufacture semen. Thus, both hair loss and masturbation are caused by being male, but neither hair loss nor masturbation cause each other to happen.