I often hear from people who are trying to figure out for how much longer they will have to deal with telogen effluvium. Often, they have read that this condition is caused my a trigger. So many will attempt to remove that trigger and then wonder for how long they will still be dealing with the hair loss.I heard from someone who said: "my hair has been shedding for about five weeks. I researched one of the new medications that I have been taking and I learned that it can cause hair loss. So, I worked with my doctor to find an alternative. That was over a week ago and my hair is still shedding just like always. It's not any better. I feel pretty confident that I have removed the trigger, so why hasn't my shedding stopped? How long is it supposed to take?"The answer to this question depends upon the trigger, the person involved, and whether or not you are actually dealing with telogen effluvium. I have had people tell me that their hair loss stopped within days of eliminating the trigger and I have had people tell me that it took many weeks or even a month or two for the hair loss to return to normal. (This was my own experience.) I have an opinion as to why people have such dramatic differences in their response. And I will explain that now.Please keep in mind that this is only my opinion. I'm certainly not a doctor or specialist. Much of my beliefs about this topic comes from own experience or from the experiences that I hear about on my blog. But, it seems to me that people who have external triggers have a quicker recovery than those with internal triggers. What I mean by this is that people whose trigger is external things like scalp issues, a reaction to styling products, or inflammation seem to notice a very quick recovery because the thing that was constantly irritating their scalp and causing the hair loss has suddenly been removed.On the other hand, people who have had an internal trigger like an illness, childbirth, or prolonged stress on the body seem to take a bit longer to recover. And I think that the reason for this is that, in the case of internal triggers, the hair has gone into the shedding phase in order to save its reserves since hair isn't necessary for survival. Once the hair cycle has switched from growing to shedding, it can take a while before it is actively growing again. But at that time, the shedding should decrease and eventually stop.Since this person had been shedding for about five weeks and she seemed to have an internal trigger, she still had a little bit of time until a course of true and typical telogen effluvium would be over. Most specialists will tell you that this type of hair loss takes about three months to resolve. So she still had a bit of time before she might suspect that she was dealing with another type of hair loss.I know that when you are shedding hair, it's easy to get very discouraged and to want for this to be over as soon as possible. But the good news is that if you have removed the trigger, better times should be on the way. And it was possible that in a very short period of time, this would all be a bad memory. If the three month point has passed with no relief, then you may want to take a closer look at what type of hair loss you are dealing with.
