I sometimes hear from people who notice that their telogen effluvium removal improves after cutting their hair. Often times, this encourages them quite a bit and they wonder if more courtesies would help the situation even more. I heard a woman say, “I’ve been moving for four and a half months. I had put off having my hair cut because every time I touch my hair, it falls out. So I didn’t want to feel embarrassed by tons of hair coming out of my hands. from the stylist. However, my hair got so shaggy that I couldn’t put it off any longer. Unbelievably, when I cut my hair, it hardly fell out for the next three days and this was just for a cut. So I wonder what would happen? If I got a real cut and took a little bit of length off it. Would this kind of drastic haircut stop my telogen effluvium? “

I can only tell you my opinion on this, which I have seen to be correct many times. It is very common for hair loss to improve after coloring and cutting the hair. Why? Because when we are shedding so much, we develop the habit of handling our hair very carefully. We learn to wash it especially gently and we take special care when brushing or combing it. However, our stylist does not have this type of care. So a lot of hair is likely to come out when you are cutting and styling it. (And we generally don’t see this because we don’t have eyes on the back of our heads.)

Because of all the hair loss on our date, we have a break in the days following this one. Sometimes this lasts for about a week. But usually, no matter how short we cut our hair, the shedding resumes (unless telogen effluvium resolves internally, which is possible). The reason for this is that, other than cutting her hair, she has not made any changes that could affect her shedding. And cutting your hair only affects it externally. Telogen effluvium usually only stops when it has finished its cycle. What this means is that once you start to lose hair, your hair cycle goes from growing out to falling out. And likewise, shedding stops once your cycle grows back again. This happens internally. And nothing you do externally affects this process. Cutting your hair can certainly help the appearance of your hair, and like I said, it can give you a break from falling out. But, unless you happen to get a haircut on the day your fall resolved and you went back to the growth phrase, you’re not likely to see it stop just because you cut your hair.

With all of this said, the woman in the previous scenario had been moving for four and a half months. Telogen effluvium is said to resolve only after three months. So, it was possible that she had another type of hair loss. So while cutting your hair might give you some relief, it wasn’t likely to stop the loss until your hair resumed its normal cycles or until you identified the reason you were actually losing hair. But there is nothing wrong with cutting your hair if you think it will look better. Frankly, shorter hair can be easier to manage when you’re moving because it takes up less space on clothing and furniture.