Hair Loss After Pregnancy? Give Your Body Time!

Have you experienced hair loss after pregnancy? If so, you are not alone. This is a common occurrence among women after childbirth. The reason for this occurrence is that estrogen is very low after a pregnancy.

Hormones and Body Chemistry

When a woman is pregnant, her body undergoes many changes. The levels of estrogen and progesterone are higher. Once the baby is born, the hair goes into the stage known as the telegen stage, which simply means it is resting. Then about three to six months after the baby is born, the follicles from the resting hair will begin to come out rapidly.

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This is when many women panic and think they are losing all their hair. However, rest assured it will not all fall out. Another reason for excessive loss may be the birth control being used before becoming pregnant. This is especially true of oral contraceptives. They also cause loss for the same reason as pregnancy. It is due to the production of estrogen and progesterone.

Give your body time to correct the body chemistry. By the time your baby is anywhere from six months to a year old, your hair will return to the normal cycles. What you are losing is already being replaced with new even as the old is falling out.

Resting Phase and Growing Phase

The simple way of looking at this temporary situation is that during the time of normal hair growth from 85% to 95% of it is growing. The other 5% to 15% is in the resting phase. When the resting phase is over, you will lose these hairs. They are replaced with new hair that is usually already growing.

On average, women lose around 100 hairs per day. When you are pregnant, the higher levels of estrogen cause the growing stage to last longer. Therefore, the hairs that are normally in the resting stage at this point are still growing. So the hair is thicker when you are pregnant. When you give birth and the estrogen levels drop, causing the follicles to go into the resting stage and start falling out.

More often than not, the biggest loss is among women who wear their hair long. There is nothing you can do to stop the natural resting stage. However, many women feel this is a good time to go for a short cut. Mainly the reason for this is they do not have the time to style their coiffure as they did before the baby was born.

There are products available that will help to strengthen hair and at least give it a fuller look until the new growth. There are different types of products such as, mousse and thickener that will make your hair appear much thicker by adding volume.

So, if you have hair loss after pregnancy, do not get excited. It will come back and you will have the shiny manageable hair you had previously. Get the visions out of your head of waking up some morning and being completely bald.