I sometimes hear people say things like “I’m not sure why my hair is falling out and all of these treatments are so confusing. It’s difficult for me to treat it when I’m not sure what I’m treating. Is it possible that if I do nothing, my hair loss will stop on its own?” In the following article, I will be answering this question based on my own experience and research.

Which Types Of Hair Loss Ends On Its Own?: I can say with some certainly that there are some forms of hair loss that resolves itself. Seasonal shedding is a definite example of this. Many of us have increased loss during certain periods during the year and there’s really nothing that you need to do except keep your hair and scalp clean and wait for this to pass.

Another example of when you really don’t need to do anything is medical issues like giving birth or having surgery. This situations cause hair loss called telogen effluvium or TE. Basically in this scenario, your body perceives that it needs to save its efforts and energy for whatever reason, so it resets your hair cycles. Where many of your follicles were in the growing or resting phase, they are now switched to the shedding phase and they start their life cycle all over again. The process generally takes a couple of months but then those follicles go back into the growing phrase and grow back. This process just naturally happens and once it does, you shouldn’t see the pronounced loss any more.

Alopecia Areata is an autoimmune condition that sometimes causes sudden and severe hair loss. This condition sometimes ends on its own, but sometimes it does not.

Of course, where this becomes a bit less straight forward is in scenarios where you aren’t sure if your loss is due to TE, AA, or something else. (There is also a chronic form of TE where the loss continues over several months and even years and doesn’t ultimately resolve the way that it is supposed to. This is often because the cause of the loss continues to repeat itself over and over. Generally though, as soon as your body gets over the trigger, things should return to normal.) It can be very difficult to know if you have genetic loss, seasonal loss, medical loss, or telogen effluvium.

In order to better determine what cause you are dealing with, you want to evaluate whether you’ve had any “triggers” or health issues previously. You want to take a look at your regrowth and see if it is coming in nice and thick and looks normal. And, you want to take a look at your family (extended family too, not just mothers and fathers) and see if there are any genetic tendencies in your family in terms of thinning.

Now, these things may not give you definite answers. You don’t find triggers for TE every time. People can and do have genetic hair loss (or AGA) without any family history. And, you can have allergies, yeast, inflammatory processes and all types of things that can affect your hair and scalp that come out the clear blue with little or no warning.

Types Of Hair Loss That Doesn’t Stop By Itself: Generally speaking, genetic, androgenic, and hormonal loss does not resolve itself nearly as commonly as TE does. Many times, some sort of treatment will help. The reason that these two thing are different is that, with effluvium, your body has just been placed off track, but there are no underlying issues that are adversely affecting your follicles or your scalp.

However, in the cases of AGA or hormonal imbalances, the scalp is being negatively affected each and every day because it is overly sensitive to what your body is producing (and won’t stop producing on its own.) This causes the follicles to shrink or become inflamed and to be unable to support healthy hair and healthy regrowth. This process is not nearly as likely to resolve without help. You’re going to need to address the androgens, the sensitivity, and the inability to support a normal process.

This is also true in cases of dermatological scalp issues, allergies, yeast overgrowth and other conditions which again are happening over and over on your scalp and are only causing more damage when they aren’t being addressed or treated.

How do I know all of this? Because I lived it. My hair shed and thinned for entirely too long before I become serious about addressing it. I just hoped it would stop by itself, but it never did and I lost precious time. In my quest to end my hair loss, I looked at my triggers, my iron, my thyroid, my adrenals, my hormones, and my scalp. It was a long, hard, frustrating journey which all but wrecked my self esteem but I finally found something that helped quite a bit. You can read my very personal story at http://stop-hair-loss-in-women.com.