A lot more changes go on in your body while pregnant than you could imagine. Although lots of books on childbirth talk about hormonal changes, mood swings, back aches, and the need to use low-heeled shoes, one thing that most books fail to mention is what happens to your hair during and after giving birth. You may have no idea about the cycles your hair passes through if you aren’t pregnant, which makes it hard to grasp the differences which are evoked just after childbirth and what exactly is happening to you and discover the common causes of hair loss.

You will find thousands of follicles of hair embedded in your own scalp. Each one goes through three cycles about twenty times during your own life. These cycles are:

1.Anagen – this is the growing period of a hair. About 80-90% of your hair follicles are in this period at any given time. Hair grows constantly during this 3-7 year time period at the rate of about a 1 / 2 inch per month.

2.Catagen – following the Anagen phase of hair growth, the hair passes through a 2-4 week time period when it detaches from the blood supply, the particular follicle shrinks to about 1/6 of it’s original size, and as the new hair starts developing, the bulb of the old hair is pushed upward. Somewhere between 2 and 3% of your hair is going to be in this period during any particular period of time.

3.Telogen – during this 3-month period of time, 50 – 100 hairs will fall out daily. Hair follicles turn out to be vulnerable and thin. When the hair falls out, a whole new follicle will grow up in its place.

As you can see, a few hair loss is to be expected every single day in your life. If you are pregnant, however, your hair will experience the cycles differently. When pregnant, a more substantial percent of hairs enter the Catagen cycle. It doesn’t fall out, however, due to the increase of hormones in your body. You can see, then, that following pregnancy, as soon as your hormone levels go back to normal, all this hair that is in the waiting stage and did not come out while you were pregnant reaches the Telogen stage and starts to fall out. It usually takes 3-4 months for this to take place before your hair will return to its normal cycles.

Hair loss after pregnancy is a very usual occurrence, and it’s really nothing that should cause you undue alert. After going through its normal processes, your hair should return to normal in a month or two. You can relax now. You are not going bald!

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