When you begin taking Minoxidil, it’s filled with optimism. Within a few weeks, you’ll find your pillow covered, shower drain stuffed, and hair clogs filling up your comb. What now? Did you mess up? Is this medicine hurting you?
First, breathe. The phenomenon you’re seeing has a name: Minoxidil shedding and it is quite possibly the most confusing step in your hair regrowth journey. Here is everything you need to know about it in layman’s terms:
What Exactly Is Minoxidil?
Minoxidil is one of the only few readily available hair loss treatments which is actually backed by clinical evidence. It increases blood circulation around the scalp area that helps to stimulate weak, dormant hair follicles back into the growth cycle. It can be applied in topical liquid and foam formats, or taken as a pill and it’s typically a go-to option for both males and females suffering from pattern hair loss.
So Why Does Hair Fall Out After Starting Minoxidil?
This sounds like a terrible, sadistic trick, but it’s actually your biology, hard at work on your behalf. Your scalp hair works in three natural phases: active growing (anagen), transitional (catagen), and resting (telogen), shedding old hairs. By taking minoxidil, you’re kicking dormant hairs (in their telogen phase) to release their position, signaling the follicles to ramp back up to their anagen phase.
Prior to this new growth cycle, existing hairs shed, and the result is telogen effluvium, this is a positive. This, my friends, is comparable to fruit trees: you remove dead leaves so new fruit can be produced That’s not a signal you’re doing it wrong; That’s a signal that you’re doing it right.
How Much Shedding Is Normal?
A healthy person can potentially lose 50-100 hairs per day. When undergoing Minoxidil shedding you may see a little more than that – in the first 2-8 weeks you may observe some thinning over your entire scalp, rather than patchy thinning in one location. If you’re losing chunks of hair, or have a visible balding spot develop, you will need to check with a dermatologist. This goes past just the ‘shed’.
When Does the Shedding Stop?
The comforting part is for the vast majority, Minoxidil shedding lasts between 1 and 3 months into treatment and afterwards the follicles should start producing new, healthy hairs. By and large, you’ll start seeing growth 3-6 months into using it and by 9-12 months, you’ll be experiencing dramatic results. The number one thing you must practice is patience. One of the most common mistakes made with Minoxidil use is stopping it during the shed period, which is when it is due to come good!
What If Minoxidil Alone Is Not Enough?
For moderate and early stages of hair thinning minoxidil can be a great option. If your hair is further thinning, however, and you don’t respond to topical therapies, you may want a long-term answer. The good news is if you live in the nation’s capital, a hair transplant in Delhi is a highly available choice for advanced hair loss patients, boasting the country’s finest hair surgeons who implement up-to-the-minute techniques and bespoke plans to achieve lasting, healthy-looking results.
Is a Hair Transplant the Right Next Step?
For the early hair fall Minoxidil is not a substitute for Hair transplant – they do serve different purposes but if hair has thinned too much and a hair transplant in Delhi the recession is also visible and not responding to Minoxidil, then surgery is considered the best. Hair transplant is the only option to achieve permanent, natural results and the best hair transplant procedure currently available in India is the FUE procedure Follicular Unit Extraction. In FUE hair transplant in Delhi individual hair follicles are harvested and implanted on to the areas which require dense hair implant. No linear scars is the end result of this process. The result should appear natural because the procedure causes much less discomfort and no need of much time to recover.
How Much Does It Cost?
The cost of a hair transplant in Delhi starts from Rs. 35,000 to Rs. 1,50,000 or more, depending on your number of grafts, technique, and clinic’s reputation. The precise cost of hair transplant in Delhi can be revealed at the consultation.
Final Word
Minoxidil shedding is temporary. It is just resetting your scalp and you will need to be patient. It will return with more thickness then it used to. Have a consultation with a hair specialist if you need further treatment from what minoxidil is not sufficient to offer you. Your hair story is just chaptering up nothing else .