What To Do For Postpartum Hair Loss

June 30, 2022

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How To Disguise Thinning Hair

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If youre experiencing postpartum hair loss, there are several ways you can disguise your thinning hair until it grows back to its former glory.

1/ Time for a trim

One of the areas where hair loss is at its most visible is at the front. Many women are concerned about the small, thin and weak hairs that grow along the hair line after pregnancy. But this may be the perfect opportunity to try a new hairstyle bangs perhaps? Layers can also be an excellent ways of creating the illusion of thickness and volume.

2/ Change your parting

Another area women notice their hair thinning after pregnancy is along the parting. To disguise this, simply change where you part your hair! A new parting line can also have the added bonus of making your hair look more voluminous.

If you are looking to improve hair density, Serioxyl Volumising Colour Sprays instantly conceals sparse areas on the scalp, for a natural-looking densifying effect.

3/ Update your colour

Hair colour can be a wonderful weapon when it comes to disguising thinning hair. Ask your hairdresser about colour placement: a few well-placed highlights or a radiant balayage can really help give density and shape to flat, thin hair.

4/ Thickening treatments

Incorporate thickening treatments into your haircare routine.

5/ Play with accessories

6/ Styling tricks

What Are The Expert Hacks For Managing Post

Keep taking your prenatal vitamin supplement as this will help combat any nutritional deficiencies.

Skip blow dryers, hair straighteners, hair extensions and curling irons if possible, and put off any chemically-based treatments until the shedding stops.

Be extra gentle with your hair. Try to avoid washing it every day, dont tie it up too tight and use soft scrunchies instead of thin hair ties.

Introduce a collagen supplement into your diet. The amino acids in collagen may help the body make more keratin that will contribute to healthy, thick hair.

Try a multivitamin too biotin along with vitamin C, A, E, D and zinc have been shown to be beneficial in the context of hair health.

Eat a variety of healthy proteins, fruits and vegetables in your diet to make sure your body is getting all the nutrients it needs. Foods that also help healthy hair growth include fish, eggs, sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach, beans, asparagus, walnuts, sunflower seeds, and blueberries.

When washing your hair, use a good quality shampoo and conditioner that wont damage the hair cuticle or dry your hair out. Avoid chemicals, instead opting for silicone-free haircare.

Dont panic! When my hair first started to fall out, I experienced so much anxiety, but in reality, its very common for women to lose hair after having a baby, says Libby.

How Much Postpartum Hair Shedding Is Normal

Since your hair is making up for lost time, it comes out in larger clumps and quantities. You might feel like youre going to go bald, but the total volume of loss hair isnt any more than what you would have lost over the nine months of pregnancy. It just feels like a lot because it happens all at once.

Did you know that an average person loses about 100 hairs each day? Since its not all at one time, you dont notice losing that many hairs. After pregnancy, there is a dramatic increase in hair loss, so you can shed up to 500 strands per day. That sounds like a crazy amount, but its considered normal.

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What Causes Postpartum Hair Thinning

During pregnancy, estrogen and progesterone increase to enable the placenta and uterus to deliver vital nutrients, increase the size of internal structures, improve the formation of blood vessels, and support the baby’s development.

As a bonus, the increased estrogen and progesterone levels signal more hair follicles to remain in the growth phase, and the diameter of the hair shaft thickens. This means the hormonal spikes associated with pregnancy result in longer, fuller hair. However, within three to six months post-delivery, these hormone levels drop and may cause excessive hair shedding.

Prolactin is another pregnancy hormone found to play a role in postpartum hair loss. Prolactin promotes mammary gland growth and breast milk production following childbirth. Overly high prolactin levels can increase testosterone production and cause progressive hair loss in women with genetically testosterone-sensitive follicles. Recent research also shows concentrated prolactin reduces hair shaft elongation and prematurely moves the follicle from the growth phase to the catagen phase.

Hormonal fluctuations are responsible for both the enhanced hair growth and thickness experienced during pregnancy and postpartum hair shedding three to 12 months later.

Maintain A Healthy Diet

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We all know that maintaining a healthy diet is an important factor for optimal health and wellbeing. For postpartum women in particular, a healthy diet can help your overall recovery and stop postpartum hair loss from progressing.

Make sure your diet includes the necessary balance of vitamins and nutrients found primarily in vegetables, whole grains and fresh fruit. Remember to drink plenty of water throughout the day in order to stay hydrated.

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Handling Postpartum Hair Loss

I understand how frustrating postpartum hair loss can feel. Who wants to lose clumps of hair or feel like theyre going bald? Worse of all, you cant prevent the hair loss since its totally dependent on your hormones.

Since you have to let nature run its course, the best thing you can do is eat a good diet, take great care of the hair strands that stick around, and get a haircut that makes your thin hair look great. If youre concerned about the amount of hair that youre losing, be sure to talk to your doctor to see if they need to run any bloodwork

Handle Hair With Care

After childbirth, it takes some time to form a schedule as there are plenty of responsibilities to take care of. This often makes you neglect your hair and, ultimately, your hair ends up in very bad shape.

So, the first step toward hair loss prevention should actually be proper hair care.

Wash your hair gently but with a good shampoo, 2 or 3 times a week.
Dont comb, brush or tie up your hair when it is wet. Try to keep it loose until it is fully dry.
Avoid using blow-dryers and other heated hair instruments.
Be gentle when brushing and dont brush more than once a day.
Avoid pigtails, braids and any tight hairstyles that cause excessive pulling.

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How To Stop Or Prevent Postpartum Hair Loss

If the hair loss youâre experiencing is caused by hormonal changes associated with pregnancy and childbirth, the hair loss may simply stop on its own without any treatment at all.

Still, there are steps you can take to help prevent some of the hair loss:

Get enough vitamins and nutrients by eating lots of fruits and vegetables
Be gentle when you wash and brush your hair
Donât wear tight hairdos that can pull on your hair
Use only the cool setting on your hair dryer.

Above all, try to be patient with yourself. You have lots on your plate right now and there might not be much more you can do than wait it out. For some tips on handling your hair, you might like to try some of these easy hair styling cheats for new moms.

Bottom Line On Postpartum Hair Loss

Hair shedding (Postpartum Hair Loss)How to Stop it(what to do)

Before you go popping nutrition supplements or packing your smoothies with mass doses of hair growth nutrients, keep in mind that the majority of these research on hair and nutrition is based on the notion that nutrition deficiencies can cause hair loss. Whether taking more of these nutrients aids in hair growth is still unclear. At the end of the day, getting adequate nutrition should be a priority any time in the life cycle, so whether it has a direct impact on postpartum hair loss may not be the most important thing. Somethings we just cant prevent, but like everything in this motherhood thing, this phase too will pass. Keep looking ahead mama, the next chapter is moments away. You totally got this.

So mamas, let me know did you experience any postpartum hair loss?

Leave me a comment below with your thoughts!

Contribution By:

Sofia Tsalamlal, RD, MHSc Nutrition Communication

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What Causes Hair Loss After Baby

The body experiences soaring estrogen and progesterone levels during pregnancy, says Salinger, which causes hair to remain in an ongoing stage of growth, creating thicker, more lustrous strands. Then your hormones level out in the months following childbirth. Hair remains in this resting stage for approximately three months before it falls out and new growth shows itself, says Salinger. Typically the regrowth is in the form of baby bangs appearing along the hairline.

How To Deal With Postpartum Hair Loss

During pregnancy, you may experience a wow feeling about your thick and lustrous hair. But the feeling can change as soon as the baby is born. After delivery, hair often starts falling out with increased speed.

Normally, on an average, a person loses 100 hairs a day. The hormonal changes in the body during pregnancy keep those hairs from falling out.

The increased levels of estrogen keep most of the hair in the anagen phase of the hair cycle, which causes less hair loss and makes your hair look dense and thick.

But soon after delivery, estrogen levels start declining and all the hair that was in the anagen phase eventually enters the resting phase and starts falling out. Postpartum hair loss can begin any day after your baby arrives.

Dont freak out looking at the increasing amount of hair you may be shedding. This is a normal occurrence. This process of hair loss may last from six months to one year.

There is not much that can be done to stop it, but simple lifestyle changes and home remedies can keep the hair loss to a minimum as well as promote healthy hair growth.

Note: If hair loss continues with the same intensity for more than a year, consult your doctor.

Here are the top 10 ways to deal with postpartum hair loss.

Contents

10. Aloe Vera

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How Is Postpartum Hair Loss Treated

There’s no treatment for postpartum hair loss, but these steps can help your hair feel fuller and prevent further hair loss and damage:

Choose a shampoo and conditioner that add volume. Volumizing shampoos and lighter conditioners can add body to your hair. You may have to experiment to find products that work best for your hair type.
Treat your hair with care. Be gentle when washing and combing your hair. Use lower heat settings on blow dryers and styling irons to prevent damage. Avoid tight ponytails and braids that can add tension to your hair and lead to more hair loss.
Try a different hairstyle.Shorter cuts may give your hair a fuller appearance. They are also easier to take care of, which can be helpful when you have a new baby.

Also make sure youre getting the nutrients you need for hair growth with a healthy diet. Talk to your provider about vitamins to supplement your diet.

Postpartum Hair Loss: Why It Happens

If you’re wondering what on earth is causing your postpartum hair loss, the first thing to note is that you are most certainly not alone. Whether you’ve noticed you seem to be losing a bit more hair than usual or you feel your hair is significantly thinning, rest assured that hair loss happens to many women after childbirth. So, why exactly is this the case? Well, it starts with pregnancy. You may have noticed your hair felt particularly thick and shiny during pregnancy. That’s because of hormonal fluctuations that naturally occur and estrogen, especially, has a significant impact on your hair cycles. In short, the spike in estrogen that occurs in the body during pregnancy, coupled with the increased blood flow, slows down your normal rate of hair fall. Hence, the thicker hair that results. However, once you deliver your baby, these hormone levels drop causing sudden and significant hair fall.This can be devastating at the onset but you can take solace in the fact that for most women, this typically isn’t more hair loss than what would have occurred over the past 9 months if you had not been pregnant, though it is happening in one large episode.

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Eat A Balanced Diet Concentrating On Protein And Vitamins

Diet can be a great influencing factor on how quickly your hair grows. To maximize your growth, incorporate these foods into your diet :

Spinach.
Beans.
Soybeans.

Eating right will have other benefits than stimulating hair growth. It will help your overall health and increase your energy too. If you avoid eating sugar as much as you can while focusing on these healthy foods, youll also avoid those intense energy crashes that happen as the sugar wears off.

What Causes Hair Loss After Giving Birth To Your Baby

Pregnancy hormones can affect your body in several different ways. You may have noticed, for example, that your hair became thicker when you were pregnant. The hormone oestrogen was responsible for this, making your hair grow faster and less likely to fall out. However, after giving birth to your little one, you may find that all that extra hair you gained during your pregnancy now starts to come loose and shed. This is why you may experience postpartum hair loss in the first few months after your baby is born.Essentially, the surplus hair that grew during pregnancy is now falling out. In a way, although it may seem like hair âlossâ, itâs actually just things returning to as they were before you were pregnant.By the way, these same pregnancy hormones may also mean that you find your hair is oilier or drier than usual or even a slightly different colour and texture during pregnancy and afterwards.

What Happens To Your Hair During Pregnancy

While pregnant, hair sheds more slowly than normal. This can result in fuller and thicker-looking hair since you’re just not losing as much each week. When you are pregnant, you are in a privileged hormonal state,” says Dr. Yates, MD, FACS, a Chicago-based board-certified hair loss surgeon. “In your third trimester, your estrogen levels are six times higher than normal. Both estrogen and progesterone support hair growth and decrease shedding by keeping the hair in a constant anagen phase. This explains why your hair looks the most radiant at the time of delivery.

In addition to the increase of hormones while pregnant, overall lifestyle changes can contribute to a fuller-looking head of hair. Most patients experience better hair while pregnant probably due to prenatal vitamins and better nutrition overall as well as a healthier lifestyle, says Kavita Mariwalla, MD, a board-certified dermatologist based in New York.

A normal, healthy scalp loses between 50 and 100 hairs per day. One study showed that a normal head of hair is usually 85 percent actively growing, and 15 percent in the resting phase. After a stressful event, like giving birth, the resting phase percentage can increase to 70 percent.

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