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You wash your hair, and there's another clump in the drain. Some people grow it all back, while others just keep thinning. Why? Don't panic yet. Losing fifty to a hundred hairs a day is perfectly normal. Every hair grows out of a tiny flowerpot in your scalp. That little pot is called a hair follicle.
A hair grows for several years, rests for a few months, then falls out. And the same pot grows a brand-new one. So shedding is like a tree dropping leaves. Old ones go, new ones come, and the total stays about the same. So why do some people keep losing more? The most common reason is two things meeting.
The first is androgens, a kind of hormone in the body. Men and women both have them, but men have much more. The second is the genes you got from your parents. In some people, the pots at the front and top of the head are born extra sensitive to androgens. When a sensitive pot meets them, each hair gets less and less time to grow. Every new hair comes in thinner than the last.
The pot itself slowly shrinks too. In the end it only makes hairs as fine as peach fuzz, so the spot looks bald. But the pots on the back of the head don't mind androgens. A hair transplant moves those pots up to the top. And after the move, they keep growing. So whether a pot fears androgens is something it's born with. Heavy hair loss usually isn't something you washed away.
This kind of hair loss is very common. A 2010 survey in six Chinese cities: about one in every five men had it. Fewer women: about one in seventeen. And the older people get, the more common it is. In men, it usually starts at the hairline and the crown. In women, the top thins out and the part gets wider.
There's also a temporary kind. After a serious illness, a high fever, giving birth, or huge stress, a few months later, lots of hair can fall out at once. That's lots of pots taking a break at the same time. The pots aren't damaged. Usually within six to nine months, the hair comes back as full as before. For the shrinking kind, there are medicines that slow it down. Some even bring a little hair back. But you have to keep using them; stop, and the loss comes back.
So next time you see that clump in the drain, don't just count what fell out. Look at what grows back: is it getting thinner? If it is, see a dermatologist early. What else about your body puzzles you? Tell me in the comments.
Every hair grows from a tiny flowerpot. Some pots shrink when they meet a hormone called androgen, and the hair comes back thinner and thinner.
That little pot is called a hair follicle.
In short: what matters is what grows back.
So heavy hair loss is mostly built into the pots — you didn't wash it away.
Hair has no color of its own—cells at the root add it. When their spare supply runs out early, white hair shows up early. Usually it's in your genes.
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