Is your hair falling out or breaking off?

Hair loss.

It's one of the number one most frequent problems that you ask me about. Year after year. But sometimes, your hair isn't falling out at all. Sometimes my friend, it's breaking off! And other times, it can be getting pulled out prematurely. It can be very confusing, but I have the easiest hack to help you discover what's actually going on. 

First let's find one of those hairs that have left your head. Have you ever noticed that there is a little "root" attached to it on one end? We call that little thing the "bulb" of the hair. So, first try to find the bulb of your hair. Look on both ends just to make sure. Look really close if you have baby fine hair, because they're small. 

No bulb you say? AHA! That means that hair did not leave your head by falling out from the root. That hair that is missing the bulb is broken. So somewhere (maybe everywhere) on your head, you have hairs that are compromised and breaking off. Try to treat your hair gently and figure out what may be happening, but rest assured it's not "falling out". 

Now let's say you found the bulb. Is it black or is it white? Let's assume it's black. A black hair bulb means that it was pulled out of your scalp prematurely. Uh oh! Hey sis, something you're doing is too much stress on your hair. Are you wearing tight braids or ponytails? Extensions (of any kind)? Try to think of something you're doing that may be causing physical stress on your hair. This is probably the easiest hair loss problem to diagnose. 

Let's go back to the bulb one more time, and now assume it's white. A white bulb means that hair fell out naturally. Now...naturally just means that hair came to the end of it's life cycle. The tricky part is there's loads of things that can make that happen prematurely. Things going on with your nutrition, hormones, and overall health can speed up the life cycle of hair on your head. Sometimes a traumatic event can cause this to happen as well. So, when you notice lots of hairs that have little white bulbs, it's time to consider what's going on in the inside of your body. Did you start a new diet? A new type of hormone therapy or birth control? How's your thyroid doing? Just have a baby? Super stressed out? Did you lose a ton of weight recently? All of these things are triggers! 

What you might like to know is that it's considered totally normal to lose about 100 hairs per day. That's an average, so take that into consideration for your density of hair. Another thing to keep in mind is if you wash or brush your hair daily or not. Regardless of your washing and brushing schedule, you still lose your daily amount of hairs. And if you aren't brushing through or washing out your hair, those lost hairs stay tangled up in there. Then when you do actually wash or brush, you may feel like it's a ton of hair coming out. 

The most important thing is to keep an eye on what is normal for you. If you suddenly start seeing a lot more hair loss in your brush or hand, pay attention! Hair loss can spiral out of control quickly, and unfortunately it takes a while to grow back. 

Now go look at your bulbs!