My Hair is Falling Out - What Should I Do? - Advice That May Help

I used to Google the phrase "my hair is falling out" obsessively when I was on the quest for anything that would halt my hair loss that had been going on for way too long. Now, I often see this phrase in my email in box, as I often write about my own experience and eventual end to excessive hair shedding. I've conducted a lot of research on this issue due to very painful and prolonged personal experience. In the following article, I'll offer some advice on what you can do if your hair is falling out or shedding.

Have You Started Or Stopped Medications Or Have Recently Given Birth?: Many medications can cause hair loss when you go off and on them (the most common being birth control pills, antidepressants, steroids, thyroid medications, or other hormones.) This will often cause small changes internally and will cause your hair follicles to start a new cycle all at once. Thus, the shedding that is scary and impossible to ignore.

This condition is called TE or telogen effluvium. In cases of pregnancy, this will often end on it's own. In cases of medication, you can give your body time to adjust and see if time will be the ticket. If not, sometimes the medication just does not agree with you and you'll need to find an alternative (with the help of your doctor, of course.) As an example of this, I went through several different brands of birth control pills until I found one that didn't do a number on my hair.

How Long Has The Hair Loss Or Shedding Been Happening? Most experts will tell you that true TE or telogen effluvium will end all on it's own. It's merely a time game and once your body adjusts, the loss should stop as dramatically and abruptly as it started. However, in cases where the shedding has gone on for six months are more (this is called CTE or chronic telogen effluvium), you should begin looking for an underlying trigger for the loss. Shedding that lasts for more than six months is likely a repetitive chronic condition that feeds on itself so it's important to pinpoint your trigger and address it.

Possible reasons for this are scalp issues or inflammation, medical issues like hypothyroidism, genetic hair loss or thinning, adrenal issues, of PCOS (the most common cause is by far genetic, even without an identifiable family history.) If your problem is a medical one, you've likely noticed hard to ignore physical symptoms that have gone hand in hand with your hair issues. Weight gain or weight loss, insomnia, oily skin and scalp, painful and red scalp, changes in body temperature can all be tip offs that it's time to have an endocrinologist or dermatologist (depending on what you're experiencing) have a look.

Things That You Can Do To Support A Healthy Scalp And Regrowth In The Meantime: Finding a definitive reason for your hair issues can be a very difficult and lengthy quest. However, there are some things that you can do in the meantime that can greatly help while you are waiting for a solution. This was very hard for me to accept at first, but a dermatologist once told me that until I could find a definitive reason for my loss, I should consider it genetic and caused by DHT and androgens as statistically, this was the most likely cause, even though all my female relatives are fine. Therefore, he reasoned, I should treat my loss aggressively rather than waiting and just letting my hair get thinner and thinner and becoming more and more fine in texture. It turned out that the advice was good, but the methods were not.

I was given rogaine which only intensified my loss and burned my scalp to bits. A hair dresser who specialized in hair loss and hair pieces told me that she often sees so much additional damage from strong and industrial hair loss solutions, which do more harm than good. The truth of the matter is, you can't regrow healthy hair with a decent texture without a healthy scalp. If the scalp isn't healthy, the follicles can't be nourished. If the follicles can't be nourished, the hair is either going to fall out or get finer and finer with each cycle.

It can be hard to force yourself to wash your hair when it is clogging up your drain, but it's important that you do. You don't want to allow your follicles to be clogged so that your regrowth is compromised. Use a gentle shampoo that is free from irritating ingredients and be very gentle with your fingers.

Regrowing a healthy head of hair is a two step process. First, you must slow the loss. Then, you must regrow hair that has a nice, thick texture. Sometimes with CTE, the individual strands will begin to become thinner and thinner, so that although you are regrowing hair, the effect is still a much thinner stands. You have to stop this process by both slowing your loss (this is often accomplished by lessening inflammation) and then stimulating your follicles to regrow healthy hair. This requires a scalp that can properly nourish your follicles.

Cosmetically, there are powders that match your hair color so that your scalp doesn't show through (this sounds awful, but you really don't notice this, it makes your hair look much fuller, and it buys you time.) There are also some nice volumizers that are both gentle and effective. You shouldn't pull your hair in a tight ponytail. I know it's tempting to get it out of the way so that it isn't falling on you, but pulling on it will only pull it out, especially if your follicles aren't healthy and well rooted.

How do I know all of this? Because I lived it - for way too long. In my quest to end my hair loss, I looked at vitamins, my thyroid, my adrenals, my hormones, and my scalp, among other things. 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 my very personal story at http://stop-hair-loss-in-women.com/