Reading the signs
What normal shedding actually looks like, month by month
Half of the messages we receive begin with a photograph of a brush or a plughole and the question “is this normal?”. Often it is. But “normal” needs a reference, and nobody gives women one.
The baseline
Around 100,000 follicles on a scalp; roughly ten per cent resting at any time; each rests for about three months. That arithmetic produces a normal daily release of 50 to 100 hairs. A woman with very thick hair may shed 150 and be normal; a woman with fine hair may shed 40. You do not see most of them; they go in the wash, on the pillow, on the floor, on the coat.
Why it looks like more
Wash day. Hairs that were released over two or three days are held in the hair until water and hands dislodge them, so the plughole on wash day holds two or three days’ worth. Two hundred hairs in the shower after three days without washing is normal.
Long hair. A hundred 50 cm hairs is a handful; a hundred 10 cm hairs is nothing. Women with long hair see their normal shed and are frightened by it; women with short hair do not see a shed until it is heavy.
Not sure which one is you?
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Twelve quick questions. We tell you what we think is going on, what to do about it, and we say so if it is something we cannot help with.
Start the quiz →Dark hair on light surfaces and light hair on dark ones. Bathroom tiles and black jumpers make every hair visible.
Looking. Once a woman is worried, she counts, and counting always finds more than not counting did. It is not that shedding increased; it is that attention did.
The seasons
Humans shed more in late summer and autumn. More follicles enter rest in July and August and release in September to November; the pattern shows up in every large study and most women notice it as “my hair always falls out in October”. The increase is real, modest — perhaps a third more than the spring baseline — and over by December. A second, smaller rise often follows in spring. Neither is a reason for concern.
The life events
Normal shedding is punctuated by the sheds with causes, each arriving on a two-to-four-month delay: after a baby, after weaning, after an illness, after a fast weight loss, after a medication change, after a shock. Each is normal in its context, each eases by six months, and each looks alarming in the brush.
How to know if yours is not normal
Count properly. Dry hair, day after a wash, one full brush-through, count what is in the brush. Three times over two weeks, averaged. Under 50: normal. 50–100: upper normal. Over 100 consistently: a shed. The brushing article has the method.
Look at the hairs. A full-length hair with a small white bulb is a normal release. Short hairs with no bulb are breakage, which is a different problem. The test.
Watch the time. A shed with a cause eases by six months. Shedding over 100 a day that has gone on for more than six months, with no cause you can date, needs the blood tests.
Measure the result. Shedding only matters if the volume is falling. The ponytail circumference, monthly, tells you whether it is. The method.
Ready to read your own pattern?
Take the two-minute hair quiz
Twelve questions. We tell you what we think is going on for you, and we say so if it is something a GP should see first.
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