I sometimes hear from folks who are so sick of living with the shedding that comes from telogen effluvium and are wondering how much time they will have to put in before the have a normal head of hair again.Common comments are things like: "for how much longer is my hair going to look so pitiful? I know that I have to be patient and wait for my telogen effluvium to end. I know that it takes time. But I want to put this behind me. I want to look in the mirror and see my normal reflection with my normal head of hair. How long an I going to have to wait? How long should it take?" Although the length of time varies from person to person and can depend upon a variety of factors, I will try to address this question as best as I can in the following article.A Typical Time Frame For Telogen Effluvium From Start To Finish: As I alluded to before, so many factors can go into recovery. But for the purposes of this article, I am going to assume that what we are talking about is shedding due to some change in the body or stressor like an illness or changing medications. I am also going to assume that there are no androgenetic or inflammatory issues. If this is the case, the typical time frame for this to run its course is about three months. I will say that some people tend to fare better than this and some fare a little worse. But twelves weeks is about average until you start to see a dramatic decrease in your shedding. And hopefully from that place, you will eventually see a normal level of shedding that looks like what you are used to. People often assume that this is the end of the story. But, you also have to factor in regrowth and the time frame for the same, which leads me to my next point.How Long Does It Take To Fully Regrow Your Hair?: People often confess to me that they assume that shedding out so much hair might mean that their regrowth is going to be compromised or particularly show. Again, unless there are other factors at play (like androgens and inflammation,) your hair should move from the shedding phase to the regrowth phase and you should seamlessly begin to regrow hair. With true telogen effluvium, your hair follicles should not be compromised or miniaturized, so you should see normal looking hair coming in. The question then becomes how long does it take for you to see some improvement in how your hair looks.Well, hair grows about a half inch per month. This can seem to be painfully slow while you are waiting for your hair to grow in. If you had short hair to begin with, you should see some definite improvement in a few months, with full recovery taking a half a year or more, depending upon how short your hair really is. If your hair is longer, obviously that means that there is more to fill in. You can usually measure the length of your hair and then figure out how long it is going to take. Just figure that for every inch of hair you need to regrow, you are looking at about 2 months. So if you needed to regrow eight inches of hair, then this would take about sixteen months. Don't get discouraged about this though. Even some regrowth can add volume and make your hair appear more healthy and thick. Also, if your hair is long, a blunt cut or bob can not only make your hair appear more full, but it will mean that your hair takes less time to completely fill in since you have lessened the length.
