The signs of hair fall creep seamlessly into your routine until they become normal: spotting a few strands on your pillow, a tangled bunch in your hairbrush or simply watching them swirl into the drain when showering. It’s a daily affair. Not all hair fall, however, is made equal. While the outcome may appear similar, hair shedding and hair thinning are two very different… hairy situations.
“Hair shedding is usually temporary,” explains Dubai-based aesthetic medicine and anti-ageing physician, Dr Bushra Mir. “It happens when a larger-than-normal number of hairs enter the resting phase and fall out. The follicles remain intact, which means regrowth is expected once the trigger settles.” This is particularly triggered by a sudden shock to the system, like periods of stress, illness, hormonal shifts, crash diets, postpartum changes, nutritional deficiencies, rapid weight loss and, of course, seasonal changes.
Hair thinning, on the other hand, is more progressive and involves gradual miniaturisation, in which hair becomes finer over time and overall density slowly decreases. The driving factors for hair thinning include genetics, androgen sensitivity, ageing, chronic inflammation and long-term hormonal imbalance. As Dr Mir notes, this is often long-term and can worsen without any targeted intervention.
According to Dubai-based hairstylist Samir Alhassan, the core difference between hair shedding vs hair thinning is simple: losing strands versus losing density. “Hair shedding is a quantity problem. Your hair is suddenly falling out in large amounts. Here, the follicles themselves are pretty healthy, but something has triggered them to drop the hair all at once,” he says.
“Hair thinning is a quality problem where you may not see a lot of hair in the drain, but the actual strands growing out of the scalp are becoming skinnier, weaker and more fragile over time.”
