When should you see a doctor about hair fall?

Counting hairs is the wrong test

Shedding roughly 50 to 100 hairs a day is usual. Almost nobody counts accurately, and the number varies with washing frequency anyway — so a count tends to produce anxiety rather than information.

The three signals that actually matter

• Your parting is widening. This is density change, which is the thing that matters, and it is visible in a way a count is not.
• Your ponytail feels thinner, or the band goes round an extra time.
• Shedding has been unusually heavy for more than a few weeks, rather than for a stressful fortnight.

Any one of these is a reason to have it looked at.

Why sooner is materially better

This is not general encouragement. Follicles that are thinning but still active respond better than areas that have been completely bare for years. The window in which treatment can do the most is the early one, and it closes quietly.

Waiting to see whether it settles is exactly how that window is spent.

What an assessment usually involves

An examination, and often blood tests. Iron, vitamin D, vitamin B12 and thyroid abnormalities are common and treatable contributors to hair fall — and treating the scalp while leaving a deficiency uncorrected limits how far any therapy can go.

That is a real possibility worth ruling in or out before spending on in-clinic treatment.

What you will and will not be told

No treatment can promise regrowth. What you should get is an honest account of what is realistic in your case, with protocols reviewed at the three-month mark against baseline photographs rather than assumed to be working.

If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, say so at the consultation — several therapies and medications used for hair fall are not advised then, and the plan is built around it.

Both men and women

Pattern hair loss presents differently in men and women and the plans differ, but both are assessed and treated. Women in particular often delay because the presentation is diffuse rather than a receding line, and diffuse thinning is exactly what the widening-parting test is for.

Full detail on the hair fall treatment page; see also whether dandruff causes hair fall. Consultation ₹500, waived against treatment.