Hair Loss
Hair on the pillow, a widening parting or a smooth patch: three problems that need telling apart.
You find hair on the pillow, in the shower drain or wound around a brush, and a parting that used to be narrow now shows scalp. Or you notice a patch that is simply smooth where hair used to be. Those are different events in the follicle and they belong to different conditions, which is why the phrase hair loss, and much of the advice written about it, fits some readers and not others.
How much you are losing matters less than how the loss is shaped and when it started. Loss that crept in over years across the crown or the parting suggests pattern hair loss. Loss that appeared over weeks, two to three months after an illness, childbirth, an operation, a crash diet or a long stretch of stress, suggests a shedding condition, and that kind usually settles once the trigger has passed. A round smooth patch that appeared quickly points somewhere else again. Your scalp gives clues too, because itching, burning, tenderness or scaling is not part of ordinary thinning. An assessment maps where hair is thin and where it is dense, watches how the shafts themselves vary, and tests blood only where the history suggests a contributing condition. The hair and scalp guides take that reasoning a step at a time.
One group should not wait. Scarring alopecia destroys the follicle through inflammation and the hair does not return from it, so a scalp biopsy in that situation is the step that decides whether anything can still be saved. The topic is spread across several sites because the diagnosis decides the answer rather than the treatment, and because the same scalp and hair assessment also decides whether the opposite complaint, unwanted hair, can be treated with light at all.
The procedures
One page per procedure: candidacy, recovery, risks, limits.
Choosing between options
Head-to-head comparisons that name no winner.
Background and service lines
The medical system behind the cluster.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
How much hair loss in a day is normal?
Fifty to a hundred hairs a day is normal rather than disease, because follicles cycle through growing and resting phases and the resting ones are shed. Counting hairs is a poor way to judge a problem. Pattern and timing tell you much more: loss that has built over years in one region is a different situation from a sudden diffuse shed after an illness.
Does hair loss in women mean a hormone problem?
Often not. Pattern hair loss in women is common and frequently runs in families with no hormonal abnormality behind it. Testing is targeted rather than routine, and it is worth doing when cycles are irregular, when there are signs of excess androgens, or when the history suggests thyroid disease or low iron stores. Those findings change the plan rather than merely labelling it.
Can hair that has already gone grow back?
It depends on whether the follicle is still there. A follicle that has miniaturised can often be pushed to produce a thicker hair again, though the response takes months and is judged over that timescale. A follicle destroyed by scarring does not recover, which is why that group is treated urgently. Shedding after a trigger usually reverses once the cause is dealt with.
I have been losing hair for years. Is it too late to be assessed?
No. Pattern hair loss that has been progressing for years can still be assessed, and treatment classes exist that hold it and partly reverse it. What changes with time is how much recovery is realistic, not whether anything can be done. Long-standing loss also makes the picture easier to read than the first confusing months of a shed.
Could my styling be causing this?
Yes, and it is one of the few categories you control yourself. Sustained pulling from tight styles, extensions and some braiding causes traction loss, while chemical relaxers and repeated heat damage break the shaft. Early traction loss can reverse once the tension stops. Loss that has sat in the same area for years is less likely to. The two are told apart at an examination rather than at home.
Do I need blood tests or a biopsy?
Not always. Blood tests are used when the history or the examination points to a contributing condition such as thyroid disease, low iron stores or, in selected women, a hormonal cause. A biopsy is reserved for the situations where the scalp itself looks abnormal, most importantly when scarring is a possibility. Both are decisions made after the scalp has been examined, not before.
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