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Hair shedding

Scalp changes as well as shedding

Started 7 November 2024 · 22 replies · 257 hearts · read 4.1k times

FabianBasel, CH · 7 November 2024
1.7 years ago

Scalp changes as well as shedding — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

I would like to hear timescales more than remedies. Knowing how long other people's lasted would turn this from an open-ended thing into a bounded one.

I have read the guide on this and it covered the ordinary version. Mine is not quite the ordinary version and that is why I am asking.

No advice needed if you would rather not. Recognition is genuinely enough.

86

CoralieMarseille, FR
#1

I asked about it at a review half expecting to be dismissed and instead got a proper explanation, a blood test and a plan. Worth asking.

11

OttoPrague, CZ
#2

Mine slowed and stopped without me doing anything at all, over about ten weeks. I had tried four things by then and I do not believe any of them did it.

14

AnnikaStockholm, SE
#3

Somebody here described the shedding phase as grieving something small and constant, and that was exactly right and I had not had words for it.

9

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK
#4

Holding for a second on a habit rather than on anybody: people in this circle call their own symptoms trivial, and they are usually not. If you have done it on this page, I would rather name it than let it go by.

24me too 4

NyreeChristchurch, NZ
#5

I found the counting worse than the shedding. Once I stopped looking at the plughole every morning the whole thing became much smaller.

10

MairéadMayo, IE
#6

Building on what Annika wrote rather than answering the original question.

My experience was that protein intake mattered — not as a cure, but my dietitian flagged that mine had dropped a long way and correcting it seemed to help.

12

MarthaCork, IE
#7

The thing nobody warned me about was that it kept going for a while after the trigger had passed. The lag confused me for months.

8

DillyNewport, UK
#8

I wore it up for six months and nobody noticed anything, which I found simultaneously comforting and slightly annoying.

11

IkeChicago, IL
#9

Marking that I am here, in case that counts for anything today.

11

PerrinNice, FR
#10

Martha, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Something I read here that steadied me: shedding is often a response to a change several months earlier rather than to what is happening this week.

6me too 1

GroverPortland, ME
#11

Two years on mine is back to how it was, slightly different in texture, and I no longer think about it at all. That is my whole update.

9

OsmanAnkara, TR
#12

I got a scalp check because I was worried and it was straightforward and reassuring and took ten minutes. I had built it up enormously.

13

NyalaAddis Ababa, ET
#13

It is a real thing and it is not trivial, and I would say that to anybody who has been told it is only hair. It upset me more than anything else did.

8me too 1

WinnieCarlisle, UK
#14

Gently disagreeing with Grover, or rather adding the other half of it.

Coming back at the year mark to say it regrew. I promised in my first post that I would come back and say either way, and I am glad the answer was this one.

13

WystanCheltenham, UK
#15

Nyala, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Mine was patchy rather than general and that turned out to be a different question worth asking about specifically. Please do describe the pattern accurately.

12

GudrunAkureyri, IS
#16

What kept me going was reading the older threads here where people posted at the start and again a year later. The year-later posts are the useful ones.

10

MargueriteQuebec City, CA
#17

Read, understood, and glad you are here.

14

EphraimBrooklyn, NY
#18

Mine started at about month four, went on for three months, and has completely regrown. That timeline was the thing I could not find anywhere when I needed it.

12me too 6

FabianBasel, CH
#19

What I would say to anybody at the start of it: it is very unlikely to be permanent, and it is also completely reasonable to be upset while it happens.

6me too 2

CoralieMarseille, FR
#20

Coming back to what Marguerite wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

The drain was how I found out. I had noticed nothing until then and then I noticed everything, constantly, for about a month.

12

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK
#21

Before anyone offers a remedy: what has been described in this thread is on the list of things that need a clinician today rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

25

AnnikaStockholm, SE
#22

What my GP checked was ferritin, thyroid and B12, and one of them was low and worth correcting regardless. Worth asking for, in my experience.

7