It is a must for everybody to have an idea of their normal daily hair loss. We lose hair, everyday. It is not a rare instance to find hair clinging to your hands when you wash your crowning glory. So what is normal and what is not? When should you take action?
Normal daily hair loss: When does it become excessive? How do you know it is excessive?
Did you know that normal hair loss actually varies from person to person? Well it does vary from person to person depending on the density of their locks and the hair color.
An average person has about 100,000 hair follicles. But this can increase or decrease depending on your natural hair color. It has been researched that blondes have the highest density with over 140,000 follicles.
Brunettes or those with black hair have 110,000 hair follicles. The lowest density goes to redheads with 90,000 follicles.
Our tresses go into three phases: anagen, catagen and telogen. The anagen phase is the "growing" phase of a human hair. Almost all of our tress strands are in this stage for a period of 2-5 years. There are some people who can grow their tresses until shoulder length only (shorter anagen cycle) and there are those who can grow theirs up to their ankles (longer anagen cycle)-this is all because of the anagen phase.
The catagen phase is known as the regression stage. This is the transition between growing and resting stage. Only 1% of our tress strands goes into this phase and usually lasts for about 2-3 weeks.
Telogen is the last phase and this is known as the resting stage of our tresses. It can last for 3-4 months but only 10-15% of our hair can go to this stage.
Experts say that if you have shorter anagen phase, you normally lose more hair than others. If you are blonde and you have a short anagen phase, more than 120 hairs per day may be normal for you.
Since it is difficult to really figure out how much hair we should be losing per day, you just have to carefully notice big differences. For instance, when you wake up and you notice more hair on your pillow than before or when you wash your hair and a lot of strands are falling out, this could mean you are losing more strands than usual. If you ponytail your locks and you notice a significant thinning but without any bald patches, this could mean you are having excessive tress fall.
If you go beyond what you deem is a normal daily hair loss, then this is the time to act on it. You should backtrack and think about the time you first noticed this happening. It could be stress, it could be poor nutrition, it could be genetics or it could be DHT.
Don't be afraid to raise your concern to your physician. The earlier this problem can be resolved, the better.
So if you are suspecting that you are losing more hair than the normal daily hair loss, go to your doctor and discuss the potential treatment for your problem such as hair products like provillus or procerin. The important thing is for you to find a treatment right away to prevent it from getting worse.
