Hair fall: the changes that reduce it month by month

Losing fifty to a hundred strands a day is normal. Falling becomes a complaint when regrowth stops keeping up, and that is a question about the last three months, not about the shampoo you bought this week.

What is falling and what is breaking

Look at the strands in the sink or on the pillow before you do anything else, because they are two different problems.

• A long hair with a small pale bulb at one end has shed from the root. That is falling.
• A short piece with no bulb, often of uneven lengths, snapped off the shaft. That is breakage, and it is a surface-care problem, not a root problem.
• Hair coming out only when you run fingers through it, in a handful, is worth counting; a few strands in the comb is not.
• The part widening, or the temple going back, is a different matter again and no amount of oiling changes it.

The kinds of falling, and what each one does

• Diffuse falling two to four months after a fever, surgery, delivery, a crash diet or a hard illness. The body switched hair into shedding mode at the time of the stress; the hair comes out months later. This usually settles on its own over six to nine months once the cause is behind you.
• Pattern falling: the part widens in women, the hairline and crown thin in men. Slow, permanent, and it needs treatment started early rather than a routine change.
• Round bare patches, smooth, with no broken stubble, sometimes eyebrows too. This is an immune question and a physician should see it early.
• Traction: a tight ponytail, braid, bun or binding worn for years at the same line, usually at the temples and the hairline.
• Itching, heavy dandruff, redness or scaling with the falling. The scalp is the problem, not the follicle.
• Falling in clumps with a new medicine, with hair loss all over the body, or with a scarred, shiny patch.

What you can actually change

This is the part that helps most people who come after a bad three months.

• Eat enough protein at every meal, and stop the very low-calorie diet. Hair is the body's last priority for nutrition, so it is the first thing to show a shortfall.
• Get iron checked, and treat a low level properly. This is the commonest finding in young women with diffuse falling.
• Wash two to three times a week with a mild shampoo worked into the scalp, not the lengths. A dirty, sweaty scalp makes falling look worse than it is.
• Oil the scalp thirty to sixty minutes before washing, gently with the fingertips, not with nails. Leaving it overnight is not better, and on thin hair it only makes washing rougher.
• Comb when dry with a wide-tooth comb, from the ends upward. Wet hair stretches and snaps.
• Heat on the lowest setting, at a distance, on dry hair, never on the root. Straighteners on wet hair cut the shaft.
• Change the parting and loosen the tie. Leave the tight style out for a month and see whether the temple line recovers.
• Fix the dandruff. Treating the lengths while the scalp is scaly and itchy accomplishes nothing.
• Sleep, and the illness or the stress, if that is where this started.

What does not work

• Any oil that claims to regrow a receded hairline. Oils condition the surface and improve the look; they do not reverse pattern loss.
• Onion juice, garlic rubs and ginger on the scalp. Traditional, sometimes helpful for a patch, and often enough to inflame the skin.
• Overnight oiling every day, which clogs the follicle opening and brings fresh itching.
• Anti-falling shampoos bought for the marketing. A shampoo sits on the scalp for ninety seconds.
• Biotin and hair vitamins taken without a deficiency, which mostly make a laboratory test read falsely.
• Vigorous brushing, and daily scrubbing of a tender scalp.
• Waiting out a patch, a scarred area, or falling with fatigue, and hoping it settles.

What Aksa looks at

Hair and scalp are treated complaints at our clinics, and the first thing on the table is not the shampoo.

• When the falling started, and what happened three months before it: fever, delivery, weight loss, surgery, a new medicine.
• Haemoglobin and iron, thyroid, blood sugar, and in women the pattern of periods, jawline marks and weight.
• The part, the temple line, the hairline and the eyebrows, which tell falling from breakage from pattern.
• The scalp itself: scaling, redness, pus points, tender patches.
• How often you wash, what you tie, what heat you use, and what you have already spent money on.

How long before you see it

• Anything you change today shows at the root, not the length, so the honest first reading is three months.
• New short hairs along the part, standing up like stubble, are the earliest good sign, usually at three to four months.
• Post-illness falling slows by the fourth or fifth month after the trigger and full thickness takes longer.
• Pattern loss that is already gone does not come back; the aim there is holding what you have.

When to see a doctor

• Round bare patches, or falling of eyebrows or lashes.
• A scalp that is red, scaly, painful, discharging, or a patch that looks shiny and scarred.
• Falling in clumps suddenly, after starting a medicine, or with fever and weight loss.
• Falling with tiredness, cold intolerance, hair elsewhere on the body thinning, or periods that have become irregular.
• A child losing hair, or hair loss with ring-shaped scaly patches, which needs oral treatment.
• Widening part or receding line in someone under thirty, where early treatment makes the difference.

In a free video consultation an Aksa physician reads the pattern of your falling against the last three months, your reports and your scalp, and tells you plainly whether this is a shedding that will settle or something that needs treatment now.

Every individual is different. This page is general education, not a prescription for you, and it cannot replace an examination.