Why Is My Hair Falling Out?
The Answer Could Be Simple
You are in the shower. You look down at the drain. And your heart stops. There is a clump of hair. A big one.
You panic. You think, “Am I going bald? Is there something seriously wrong with me?”
After 38 years of practice, I have reassured countless patients about this. And usually the answer is a condition called telogen effluvium.
It is a fancy name for what is also called a “stress shed.”
Here is how it works. Your hair has a life cycle. It grows. It rests. Then it falls out to make room for a new one. Normally, only about 10 percent of your hair is in the resting phase at any one time.
But when you go through a massive shock, it pushes a huge number of hairs into that resting phase all at once. That shock could be surgery, a high fever, a crash diet, extreme stress, or a hormonal imbalance.
Here is the detective clue that confuses everyone. It does not happen right away. There is about a three-month lag from when the shock occurred.
One of the most classic examples is pregnancy. I had a patient who had a beautiful delivery and felt great. Three months later, she came in terrified because her hair was falling out in handfuls.
In reality, the stress of the delivery had triggered the cycle. It just took 90 days to show up.
The good news is that this is usually temporary. It is just a reset of the cycle. Once the trigger passes, the hair usually grows back on its own over time.
So here is what I want you to do. Look back at your calendar. If you are losing hair right now, think about what happened around three months ago.
Did you have surgery? An infection? A major life crisis? Were your hormones out of balance?
The good news is your hair should come back.
If this is what you are dealing with, tell me your story in the comments below.
Authored by Gerard Guillory, MD
Gerard Guillory, MD, is a board-certified internist who practiced for nearly four decades with a focus on functional, root-cause medicine. He is the author of three books on irritable bowel syndrome and the founder of It’s My Health, where he and his team put current health news in context and help members understand the underlying causes of chronic symptoms.
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