Re: Hair Loss due to haircut?

Is your hair lost?

Barbara - 

First, take a deep breath.  And then read the following hair facts 
(real facts, not the things they TELL you are facts in the advertisements on 
TV).  

1)  When hair emerges from your scalp and becomes visible, it is a dead 
protein filament, a dead thread, with a living end still attached to the 
hair follicle deep in your head.  When you pull out a hair, that little bump 
at the pulled out end is the living end.  It of coarse dies soon as you 
pulled it away from its source of nutrients.
2)  Because the hair emerging from your scalp is dead, anything you do to it 
(cut it, dye it, shave it) does NOT effect how it grows.
3)   However, because your hair is attatched to you, if you are stressing 
out and agonizing over things to the point of not eating well, or making 
yourself feel icky, your hair will be affected.  That is your body will 
redirect the energy from growing hair to things like brain and major organ 
maintenace, and possibly sending extra energy to your worry gland (ok that 
is a joke ;).  So the fact that this hair fiasco has sent you into a self 
appearance tail spin may be affecting the health and growth rate of your 
hair.... BUT the hair cut itself did not.
4) Every hair follicle in your body is not always constantly growing non 
stop.  Each individual follicle has on periods of ON and OFF.  This is the 
reason that even if your have a perfectly razor straight hair cut, in a 
while it will start to look raggedy and needs to be trimmed.  In a given 
time period, some hairs grew fast, some slow and some not at all.

Now with these facts in mind - back to your head.  First, your hair will 
look a bit odd and thin as it grows back in.  Some is growing, and some will 
grow in a bit later.  (Why do you think Michael Jordan keeps his head 
shaved?  He says its a trademark, but in reality, he would look quite goofy 
as all the hair splotchily grew back in ;)  This means that one must 
cultivate ones head for that nice trim looking buzz cut, it doesn't grow in 
that way!

As for the shaving... well give the hair some time to get going.  And it 
will keep growing back pretty much the way it is this time.  Before you 
despair, I want to assure you, is VERY different from how it will look when 
the hair is 1/2 inch long, or even an inch long (and so on). By the way, if 
you shaved your head in an annoyed and frantic mood, you may have irritated 
your scalp, and so it is recovering, and therefore the OFF segment of some 
of your hair follicles may have been extended.

Now, I also bet you are wondering what to do right NOW.  a) eat plenty of 
protien.  Tat is what hair is mainly built of.  If you have too little in 
your diet, hair (and fingernail) growth will suffer.  If you are watching 
your fat intake look to legumes (beans), they are a great low fat source of 
protein.  If not, have a hamburger.  b)If your hair is making you currently 
uncomfortable chack out the hats'n'scarves option (see above note about 
extra stress) or just say you are going for the Susan Powter look via GI 
Jane - or that you have been thinking so hard recently that it was producing 
excess heat, so you needed to cool it off.  c)And finally - GET a NEW 
STYLIST.  And remember whoever he or she is.... you can say "STOP! What are 
you doing?" Remember - you are paying for a service, and should be able to 
say what happens.  If you go out for ice cream, ask for chocolate and get 
strawberry, noone thinks the worse of you if you hand it back for the right 
flavor.  So don't forget you have the same right in the hair salon.

Hope this helps (and though it may seem it - everyone is not looking/
thinking about you, they are thinking the same thing about themselves)

Greta