My hair is falling out and the strands that fall out taper at the ends - why?

My hair is falling out and the strands that fall out taper at the ends - why?

I get a lot of questions from people who suffer from hair loss about shedding hair that has tapered ends. Questions about hair with tapered ends are common, as are questions about shed hair with white bulbs at the root. People often look for clues on both sides of their shed hair. And many people assume that the tapered ends and white bulb may be significant in indicating a cause of hair loss or the state of your recovery.

I heard from someone who said, "I know this is going to sound weird, but I examine a lot of my shed hairs. And I can't help but notice that most of them taper at the end. Why is this the side?" away from the bulb comes to a tapering point? What does that mean? Does it mean anything regarding why my hair is shedding or does it mean I haven't recovered? “

There are many theories about possible reasons for the tapered ends on shed hairs. One possible reason is that the hair with the tapered ends is hair that has not yet been trimmed or trimmed. When you go to your barber and get your hair cut, the scissors will dull the hair at the ends where it was cut. So hair that was cut (and is probably older hair) was not rejuvenated but blunted.

In this case, the person who wrote said that most of what they saw falling out was hair that was tapering, and this brings up another set of possibilities. She had to wonder if it had been a very long time since she had cut her hair, or if it was possible that she was suffering from hair loss like chronic telogen effluvium or androgenic alopecia, where she was cycling through new regrowth.

You see, when you have chronic teleogenic effluvium, your hair can go through a few cycles of shedding, trying to grow back, then shedding again before the trigger that started the hair loss is first removed, allowing normal hair cycles to start over. So that's a possibility.

Another possibility is androgenic alopecia. There is a theory that the sebum that builds up in this condition hinders the hair from growing, and therefore these pronounced, tapered ends are evidence of this process. Many describe these types of ends as almost having a little round bump at the end. You can literally feel these when you run your hand along the shaft of your shed hair. This looks (and feels) very different from tapered hair that has never been cut, or even the ends of hair affected by telogen effluvium.

It may be helpful to consider the length of these hairs used up. If they are short, it is likely that it is a regrowth that is going through either due to dandruff or your scalp is unable to sustain its regrowth (as is often the case with androgenic alopecia).

Finally, one final thought. Some hair affected by an autoimmune hair loss condition called alopecia areata produces so-called exclamation point hair. These hairs also have tapered ends, but I have to tell you that this disorder is relatively rare and the hair loss is often patchy rather than diffuse. So there can be many reasons for tapered ends including: uncut hair; This is the shedding part of its life cycle: or hair that is shed prematurely due to different hair loss conditions.

Inspired by Ava Alderman