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

Due to all the hair loss at our appointment, we have a respite in the following days. Sometimes this lasts a week or so. But usually, no matter how short we cut our hair, shedding resumes (unless the telogen effluvium is resolved internally, which is possible). The reason for this is that aside from cutting his hair, he hasn’t made any changes that would affect his 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. Getting your hair cut can certainly help the look 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 returned to the growing phrase, you’re not likely to see it stop just because you cut your hair.

With all that said, the woman in the scenario above had been shedding 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, she 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 is nothing wrong with cutting her hair if she thinks it will look better. Frankly, shorter hair can be easier to manage when she’s moving because it takes up less space on her clothes and furniture.