1 Story Garage With Living Quarters

1 Story Garage With Living Quarters

As I type this, I have a small collection of eyebrow hairs and lashes piled up on the side of my laptop. Writing an article about a condition that involves the compulsive over-plucking, picking, and pulling of your hair may make the average person wince. For me, plucking is a daily occurrence. The urge to feel the relief of removing one (or two, or three) hairs that feel "out of place" on my body is stronger than my will power, which has left me with irreversible damage: scars, bald spots, and scabs all over my body (yes, even on my nipples).

Why am I sharing this extremely intimate information with the general public? Because, while this may sound "abnormal" to some of you, it is a reality for people with a condition called trichotillomania. "Simply put, trichotillomania (or 'trich') occurs when an individual is unable to resist an acute urge to pull out their hair," says Aarti Gupta, founder and clinical director at TherapyNest, a Center for Anxiety and Family Therapy in Palo Alto, California. "Usually, people experience [a] heightened [feeling of] tension until the hair is pulled, at which point there may even be a sense of relief, satisfaction, or pleasure. On the other hand, many people are unable to identify any reason why they pull [their] hair, and experience it as mindless or unconscious behavior."

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The most common "pull sites" include the scalp, lashes, brows, and body hair. Gupta notes that while there is very little research behind the behavioral condition, it is what she considers a hidden epidemic. "Approximately one out of 50 people in the general population have trich," she says.

According to a study published in 2016 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, women outnumber men in reported cases of trichotillomania four to one. The study also notes that the severity of trichotillomania can ride in waves throughout a person's life for days, weeks, even years at a time.

Pulling hairs out may seem harmless, but the reality is that trichotillomania can cause physical damage, according to Joshua Zeichner, director of cosmetic and clinical research in dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. "If the patient stops pulling out the hair, it usually will grow back," he says. "However, in some cases with chronic hair pulling, inflammation may develop around the follicles, leading to permanent damage. This means that hairs may not grow back."

So, yes, while that tiny pop of a hair being plucked fresh from its follicle may provide temporary satisfaction, doing so over and over could be setting you up for permanent damage. "Hair follicles are severely damaged and the repeated pulling interferes with the natural hair formation cycle by destroying the hair matrix, which is the part of the hair follicle where the cells work together to form the hair shaft of new growing hairs," adds Bridgette Hill, trichologist and stylist at Paul Labrecque Salon. "Trichotillomania also disrupts the regeneration of the hair follicle throughout the phases of the hair cycle. Visually, the hairs are short and broken and can result in bald patches that can be misdiagnosed as ringworm or alopecia areata." Zeichner agrees, adding that a similar phenomenon may be seen in the eyebrows from chronic plucking.

1 Story Garage With Living Quarters

Source: https://www.allure.com/story/living-with-trichotillomania

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