[phpbay]Days Later,100, “”, “”[/phpbay]
Days Later
Why Do I Shed A Lot Of Hair One Day And Not Much The Next? Why The Fluctuations?
I recently heard from someone who had been having excessive hair loss and shedding for the past several months. She asked, in part: “why does my hair loss and shedding vary so much from day to day? One day, I can shed around 250 hairs, but the next day, I might only shed 50. These variations get my hopes up on the day that I shed less that things are getting better. But sure enough, a couple of days later, the shedding kicks back up again. Why does this happen? Does this mean I was improving but something stopped the improvement? Is it normal to have these types of fluctuations? How do I figure out how much hair I’m really losing and whether this is too much?” I’ll try to answer these questions in the following article.
It’s Normal For Hair Loss To Vary From Day To Day, But You Have To Watch The Averages: It’s not out of the ordinary to lose a large amount of hair one day and much less the next. There are many variables that affect this. Usually, you’ll see more hair shedding and hair loss on the day that you shampoo or wash your hair. And you typically see less hair loss on days where you skip washing. That’s because manipulating your hair follicles can pull out hairs that were already in the resting or shedding phase.
So, manipulating your hair and caring for it can appear to make more fall out, but the hair that does come out was going fall at some time in the near future anyway. Seeing more hair on these days doesn’t mean that you should cease or cut down on caring for your hair or scalp.
Knowing that these fluctuations are normal, how do you know how much hair you’re really losing and if your hair loss is a concern? You can typically just look at your averages. In the scenario above, this person lost around 300 hairs over the course of two days. The average of this would be 150 hairs per day which is well above that supposedly “normal” 100 shed hairs per day. I’m not suggesting that you count your hairs every day in order to get a precise average. In fact, I think this does you more harm than good because it creates stress that can make your hair loss worse. But once you’ve taken an initial count, you should be able to eye ball your loss in the coming days to tell where you are.
Is My Hair Loss Regimen Or Treatment Causing These Variations In Shedding?: People often ask me if it’s logical to blame their regimen when they notice huge fluctuations in hair loss. An example would be that someone tries a new topical or hair loss treatment on one day and then notices a huge shed the next day. That person might blame the new regimen and want to abandon it. The problem is, it’s nearly impossible to be able to point to a causal relationship between the two in such a short time frame.
It takes hair awhile to change phases and then to fall out. This process does not happen overnight. Unless you’ve having an immediate inflammatory or allergic reaction to a product of regimen, it’s unlikely that the hair you see coming out afterward is the direct result. Because most of the time, when you see a hair fall or shed out, that same hair has been in the resting phase for much longer than one day.
The bottom line is that even with hair loss conditions like TE, AGA, or AA, it’s not at all uncommon to see large swings and variations in the amount of hair you lose each day. And there’s not always a concrete reason for this. Sometimes, it’s just dependent on where your hair is in the hair loss process or it’s life cycle. And sometimes, the hair has been recently manipulated or is being negatively affected by the hair loss condition so that you see some elevated and more noticeable loss on selected days.
How do I know this? Because I lived it. Variations in the amount of hair shed was just one issue I dealt with when I was dealing with dramatic hair loss. In my quest to end my hair loss, I looked at my shedding triggers, my iron, my thyroid, my adrenals, my hormones, and my scalp’s health. It was a long, hard, frustrating journey which all but wrecked my self esteem but I finally found something that helped quite a bit. You can read a very personal story on my blog at http://stop-hair-loss-in-women.com/.
About the Author
Ava’s hair loss blog is at http://stop-hair-loss-in-women.com/
