I sometimes hear from people who notice that their shedding of telogen effluvium improves after getting a haircut. They are often quite encouraged by this and wonder if further cuts would help the situation further. I heard it from a woman who said, “I’ve been shedding for four and a half months. I had been putting off getting a haircut because every time I touch my hair, it falls out. So I didn’t want to be embarrassed with tons of hair coming out on my hands.” from the stylist. However, my hair got so shaggy that I just couldn’t put it off any longer. Unbelievably, when I did get a haircut, I had almost no shedding for the next three days and this was just from one cut. So I wonder what would happen if I got a real cut and took a little bit of length, would this kind of drastic haircut stop my telogen effluvium?”

I can only give you my opinion on this, which I have seen to be correct many times. It is very common for hair loss to improve after dyeing and cutting it. Because? Because when we are shedding so much, we develop the habit of handling our hair very carefully. We learn to wash it with special delicacy and we take special care when we brush or groom it. However, our stylist does not take this kind of care. So, you are likely to get a lot of hair when you are cutting and styling it. (And we usually don’t see this because we don’t have eyes in the back of our necks.)

Due to all the hair loss at our appointment, we have a reprieve for the next few days. Sometimes this lasts a week or so. But usually, no matter how short we cut our hair, shedding resumes (unless the telogen effluvium resolves internally, which it can). The reason for this is that other than cutting her hair, she hasn’t made any changes that would affect her shedding. And cutting your hair only affects it externally. Telogen effluvium usually only stops when it has finished its cycle. What this means is that once you start shedding, your hair cycle goes from growing to shedding. And likewise, shedding stops once its cycle grows back again. This happens internally. And nothing you do externally affects this process. Cutting your hair can certainly help the appearance of your hair, and like I said, it can give you a break from shedding. But, unless you coincidentally cut your hair on the day the molt was resolved and you went back to the growing phrase, you’re not likely to see it stop just because you cut your hair.

With all of this being said, the woman in the above scenario had been moving for four and a half months. Telogen effluvium is said to resolve after three months. So it was possible that she had another type of hair loss. So while cutting her hair might provide some relief, it wasn’t likely to stop her hair loss until her hair resumed its normal cycles or until she identified the reason she was actually losing hair. But there’s nothing wrong with cutting her hair if she thinks it will look better. Frankly, shorter hair may be easier to manage when she’s moving because it takes up less space on her clothing and furniture.