This is not the first time Milano has documented her battle with Covid-19. Earlier this year, she shared a photo of herself on Instagram using breathing apparatus, with the caption, “I had never been this kind of sick before. Everything hurt. Loss of smell. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.”
Milano’s video certainly matches the experience of Hayley Rivett. So, is hair loss the last long-term symptom of Covid-19?
The short answer is, we do not know for sure. Like so much research into Covid, science is still in its early stages. However, there is a pattern of emerging switches out there. For example, a survey of patients conducted by a physician at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Covid-19 survival group Survivor Corps identified hair loss as a potential symptom of the disease, with nearly a third of participants taking it report.
According to Dr. Sharon Wong, a consultant dermatologist, someone suffering from post-covid hair loss is likely to have a condition known as telogen effluvium, in which the body loses hair as a result of stress. She says she has seen a number of patients who had viral symptoms in March and April – some, but not all of those who tested positive for Covid – who experienced telogen effluvium a few months later.
“One of the trigger factors for telogen effluvium is an acute short-term disease,” she says. “That’s typically an infection that gives you a high temperature – things like a bad flu, glandular fever, and of course Covid.”
Dr Wong explains that the condition shocks hair follicles to leave their ‘growing’ phase early and in their ‘repeat’ phase (known as telogen). Normally you should have 90 percent of your hair in the growing phase, and the remaining ten percent in the lost phase. “When you go through that cycle, you look at 70 percent of the hair in the growing phase, and 30 percent in the lost phase,” says Dr. Wong. “You will suddenly run out of a larger portion of rent at one time.”
Telogen effluvium generally occurs two to three months after the trigger, which may explain why medical professionals are now beginning to see the symptom appear, several months after the first wave of Covid infections. However, Dr Wong sounds a note of caution: “These are early stages. We have no reason to think that Covid-19 would affect telogen in any other way than it is an infection associated with a high temperature. Only time will tell. “
One complicating factor here is the fact that lockdown has caused increasing levels of anxiety, which in turn can be a cause of hair loss. A study conducted in Turkey found that alopecia increased during the coronavirus pandemic, prompting researchers to assess the impact of short-term stress. Often it is a cruel cycle. Once hair loss sets in, it can trigger even more feelings of anxiety and stress.
“There’s a big correlation between increased hair loss and feelings of stress and anxiety,” says hair loss expert Spencer Stevenson. “Given these uncertain times, when people are losing their jobs, experiencing financial stress and family loss, stress among the population has reached a whole new level.”
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