Is Shedding a Sign Your Hair Serum Is Working?

Jump to: Is it normal? · How much shedding is normal? · How long does it last? · Does it mean it's working? · Is this minoxidil shedding? · How to track it · When to see a doctor · Where a serum fits · FAQs

You started a hair serum to lose less hair. Three weeks in there's more of it in the drain, and you're standing there wondering if you've made things worse.

Probably not.

Is it normal to shed more when you start a hair serum?

Most of the time, yes. Not always.

It's the growth cycle doing what it does rather than a sign that something has gone wrong.

Your follicles don't all work on the same schedule. At any moment, roughly one in ten is resting. It has finished growing a hair and is simply holding onto it, waiting. That hair has stopped growing and sits loosely in place until the follicle releases it.

When a resting follicle starts up again, it lets go.

The hair that comes out was already finished. It's leaving a few weeks earlier than it would have. Do that across a few thousand follicles at roughly the same time and the handful in the shower suddenly looks alarming, even though the total number of hairs on your head has barely moved.

Doctors call the four stages anagen (growing), catagen (winding down), telogen (resting) and exogen (shedding). When a large number of follicles hit telogen together, the resulting shed has a name: telogen effluvium.

Same thing happens after illness, after childbirth, after a stretch of bad sleep or a drop in iron. The follicles synchronise, then they all let go at once.

How much hair shedding is normal?

The usual figure quoted is 50 to 100 hairs a day, and there is normal variation around it. The honest version is that the range is broad, nobody counts, and wash frequency changes the number more than anything happening on your scalp does. Wash twice a week instead of daily and you'll "lose" several times as much each time, having lost exactly the same amount overall.

What's actually normal is a pattern rather than a number:

• Shedding spread across the whole scalp rather than concentrated in one spot
• Hair that grows back at roughly the same thickness
• A parting that looks the same in the same lighting month to month
• A spike that eases within a few weeks or a couple of months

How long does the shedding last?

Usually a few weeks. Sometimes a couple of months.

Here's the bit that trips people up, though. Shedding runs on a delay. If something knocked your follicles off course, whether flu, a crash diet, or a difficult few months at work, you won't see it in the drain until two or three months later.

Apply that to your own timing before you blame the bottle. If you started in March and you are shedding in April, the serum has not been on your scalp long enough to have caused it. What you are seeing was set in motion before it arrived.

Shedding two or three months after something significant, an illness, a birth, a big change in weight, is usually the hair cycle catching up with the event rather than something new going wrong.

Dr Nor Nabilah binti Azmi, Family Medicine Specialist. MD (Warsaw), MICGP (Ireland).

Does shedding mean the serum is working?

It's a fair reading, and it's the most likely one when the pattern fits.

Shedding that starts after you begin a new routine, spreads evenly across your whole scalp, and eases off over the following weeks is what you'd expect to see if resting follicles were waking up. That's not wishful thinking. It's the mechanism.

What it isn't is proof. Follicles cycle for their own reasons, and plenty of people shed in month one and would have shed anyway.

The real confirmation shows up somewhere else entirely, in what grows back.

You'll spot short new hairs standing up along your parting, an inch or two long, finer than the rest. You'll feel the difference at your crown between your fingers before you can see it in the mirror. And the shedding itself will taper, month by month, instead of building.

Those three things take longer than a month to show up. That's the frustrating part, and there's no way around it.

Is this the same as minoxidil shedding?

You may have seen this called the "dread shed". That term comes from minoxidil, and it's worth knowing why.

Minoxidil is a medicine. It has been through clinical trials, and an early increase in shedding is a recognised, expected response to starting it. If you're on minoxidil and shedding at week three, that is well-trodden ground and your doctor or pharmacist will have seen it many times.

A cosmetic serum doesn't inherit that evidence. The follicle biology is the same biology, but "this happens with minoxidil" is not the same claim as "this happens with my serum", and anyone blurring the two is doing it on purpose.

The wider version of that distinction, and what the ingredient evidence actually amounts to, is in what Redensyl and minoxidil each do.

If you're using both, that's a conversation for a pharmacist who can see your scalp, not for a blog post.

How to track what's actually happening

Counting hairs is pointless, for the reason above. Two better methods, both free.

1. The wash test. Keep the gap between washes the same every time. Collect what's in the plughole, put it on a plain surface, photograph it. Do that for a fortnight, then look back at the photos. You'll be surprised how badly your memory tracked it.

2. The parting photo. Same spot, same window light, same parting, every four weeks. Phone at the same height. Density shifts are invisible day to day and unmissable across three photos.

When to stop, and when to see a doctor

Most shedding after a new serum is nothing. These are the exceptions.

If your scalp becomes sore, red or itchy after starting anything new, stop using it and have it looked at. That is not part of the process.

Dr Nor Nabilah binti Azmi, Family Medicine Specialist. MD (Warsaw), MICGP (Ireland).

See someone if it came on suddenly, if it is coming out in patches rather than evenly, if your scalp is sore or scaling, or if you are losing hair elsewhere on your body. And if the skin where the hair has gone looks smooth and shiny, with no visible pores, that needs to be seen soon, because some kinds of hair loss scar the follicle and that does not grow back.

Two blood tests are worth asking for by name, because a standard panel often skips them:

Ferritin measures the iron your body has in storage, not the iron in your blood. You can have normal blood iron and empty stores, and hair notices before anything else does.

Thyroid function matters because an under-active or over-active thyroid causes shedding that no topical will touch.

Any GP can order both. You don't need a specialist referral in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia or the UK, and you don't need to have tried anything else first. If either comes back low or off, that is something you can act on directly, and worth correcting before you judge anything else. For many women, thinning turns out to be two or three things running at once.

Where a serum fits

Hair loss almost never has one cause, which is why products built around a single mechanism so often disappoint.

Alpha Serum was built the other way round. Its patented, clinically studied actives work at the follicle on several fronts at once: blood flow at the root, the local activity of DHT (a hormone that shortens the growth phase in follicles sensitive to it), inflammation, and the condition of the scalp itself. If you want the ingredient-by-ingredient version, it's here.

And then there's the half a serum can't reach. Your iron stores. Sleep. Whether the stressful stretch has actually ended or you've just got used to it. Those sit with you, and they matter as much as anything you put on your scalp.

What people describe most often is a change within the first bottle, usually at the parting or the crown. Earlier for some, later for others, because follicles keep their own time.

Here's what other people have seen, sorted by hair loss type.

Chloeya makes and sells Alpha Serum. This page is written by the brand. The general information above is what we'd tell you either way.

Common questions

Should I stop using a serum if I'm shedding more?

Not for shedding alone, as long as it's spread across your scalp and your scalp feels normal. Stop if your scalp is irritated, sore or inflamed, or if the shedding is clearly getting worse rather than better after a couple of months.

Is the "dread shed" real, or just marketing?

The pattern is real. Follicles restarting together release their old hairs together, and you notice it all at once. What's marketing is the leap from "this is happening" to "therefore it's working". Plenty of people shed without anything having changed underneath. Treat it as a possible sign, not a promise.

How long before a hair serum works?

Longer than most people expect. The first real signals are short new hairs at the parting and density you can feel at the crown, and those take more than a month. Judge it across three monthly photos, not week to week.

Does hair shedding mean new growth?

Sometimes, and it depends on the pattern. Even shedding that eases over a few weeks is consistent with resting follicles restarting. Patchy shedding, or shedding that keeps building, is not.

How bad is shedding when starting minoxidil?

It varies a lot between people, and for many it doesn't happen at all. Where it does, it's usually somewhere in the first two months and it settles. Your prescriber is the right person to ask, because they know your dose and your history.

Why is my hair shedding all of a sudden?

Sudden shedding usually traces back two or three months, not two or three days. Common triggers are illness or fever, a stressful stretch, childbirth, losing weight quickly, and low iron stores. We've written about why female hair loss gets misread if it's been going on longer than a few months.

What happens if I use hair serum every day?

Daily use is how most scalp serums are designed to be used, and consistency matters more than quantity. More per application doesn't speed anything up. If your scalp becomes irritated, that's a reason to stop and check the ingredients, not to push through.

Will the shedding come back if I stop the serum?

If you stop, the building stops. The hair you have already grown carries on in its own cycle. What ends is the work the serum was doing at the follicle. If something was driving your hair loss before you started, it's still there, so the honest answer depends more on your underlying cause than on the serum.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Hair loss has many causes and several are better answered by a blood test than by anything applied to the scalp. If your hair is thinning, if it came on suddenly, or if you have scalp pain, redness or scarring, see a doctor.