We’re not alone in pandemic hair challenges and changes. It happened in 1918-19 too

Is the COVID-19 pandemic a hair-razing event?

“Raising” is deliberately misspelled because I do mean “razing,” as in to raze, to destroy, to wipe out, to erase. Has your hair gotten thinner? Perhaps whiter?

We’ve experienced this pandemania a year now, and observations are confirming our fears: Hair loss is part of the pandemic legacy. Don’t panic if you’re one of the unlucky ones. For most, it’s temporary.

But chalk up one more thing to a growing list of pandemic possibilities, alongside weight gain, lazy muscles, wrinkly hands from excessive washing, ignored eye and dental upkeep, questionable motivation and concentration challenges — just to name a few.

So far, I’ve lost no hair to the pandemic but I surely am growing it.

Confession: I haven’t been to a hair salon in 13 months. Why bother? Few folks are seeing me these days, and I’m rather enjoying my final fling with long hair. Kinda like college in the post-hippie 70s. It’s halfway to my waist but unlike my younger years, the flaming red dims as “silver threads among the gold” co-mingle with a now strawberry blondish red. C’est la vie...

I accept it, sorta. I get bowled over every time a stranger compliments my hair, currently so many different hues that it looks like I paid for highlights. I didn’t.

Someday I’ll be like Father Williams, the “Alice in Wonderland” character whose “hair has become very white.” I’m not deliberately counting the time, but it speeds closer. I can look at historic pictures — George and Martha Washington portraits show they grew white before my current age — and marvel at the inconsistent aging of hair.

Pandemic-inspired telogen effluvium

Enough of my changing locks. What about you?

Are you a victim of telogen effluvium? That’s the medical term for hair loss resulted from fever, illness or excessive stress pushing more hairs than normal into the shedding phase.

Some of those who catch COVID-19 are losing hair several months later, as one of the virus’ long-haul effects. Much time must pass before we know all the after-effects of novel coronavirus-2019.

Others are losing pandemic hair because of excessive stress — the stress of our changed lives, losing friends and family, less socialization, worries over finances, children and jobs and too much on our responsibility plates. Often times we won’t acknowledge the excessive stress, but our bodies do with such things as telogen effluvium.

The happy news is that this kind of hair loss often grows back, unless you have the genes for male- and female-patterned baldness and your time has come. Medical conditions also play on how thick your hair remains. Eighteen months ago, I was diagnosed with anemia and one of the indicators was excessive hair loss. Most grew back.

Hair is fascinating, don’t you think? We humans spends billions a year to color, straighten, wave, strengthen, highlight, trim and design our manes to be our crowning glories.

In a humorous vindication of what we’re all going through, we’ve watched as newscasters and other personalities work from home and lessen or forgo salon trips. We’ve had front-row seats to their hair metamorphoses — growing longer, changing back to natural color, more grays showing, no longer perfectly coiffed.

Obviously, we are not alone in our pandemic hair challenges.

One year of changed research

A week ago, the U.S. observed the one-year anniversary of the first reported COVID-19 death. In the early days, many of us who are writers and researchers delved into the history of the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic to learn what we as a country might expect this time around.

Hair loss was rarely mentioned, although this newspaper had plenty of advertisements offering such products as Herolin Pomade Hair Dressing that “stops falling hair.”

Now that we are a year into our own pandemic, researchers are again looking at 1918-19. Guess what? Hair loss was noticed back then.

Scientific American last month published a memory from a Kansas woman who said her father was 16 when he got the Spanish flu and all his hair fell out. By the time he entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1920, it grew back.

A public health doctor named H.H. Hazen reported in 1919 in the American Medical Association journal that “Post-influenzal Alopecia” was appearing in his patients months after recovering, and suspected either nutrition or earlier high fevers over 102.5 as the cause for hair loss. With better record keeping in this modern pandemic, stay tuned for up-to-date reports.

Meanwhile, dependable hair truths abound.

Hair facts, and more facts

▪ One hair strand lives five years, on average.

▪ A single hair can grow from one follicle up to 20 times.

▪ Black is most common hair color in world; Red exists in 1% of population.

▪ An average person has 100,000 to 150,000 hair strands.

▪ We shed 40 to 150 strands each day.

▪ At any given time, 90% of our hair is growing; 10% rests.

▪ One strand of hair is stronger than the same size of copper wire.

▪ An average head of hair could hold 10-15 tons if only the scalp were strong enough.

▪ Hair can stretch 30% longer when it is wet.

▪ Hair grows about ½ inch per month and 6 inches per year.

▪ When born, our heredity genes are already hardwired for when and how our hair will gray.

▪ Caucasians usually begin graying in their mid-30s; African-Americans in their mid-40s.

▪ Stress and its resulting long-term production of the body’s fight-and-flight response can cause premature graying.

▪ All hair starts out white and begins changing in the womb according to how much melanin, or color pigment, is present.

▪ Hair returns to white, scientist now think, because of natural build-up of hydrogen peroxide.

▪ The scientific name for white or gray hair is canities.

Oh, no. My canities are showing! I don’t blame this on the pandemic, rather on the passing years. I’m attempting to adopt Mark Twain’s philosophy:

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.