Why Hair Sheds More in Autumn, and When It Isn’t Seasonal

More hair in the brush in autumn is common, usually harmless, and usually temporary.

The useful question is not why it happens but how to tell the difference between shedding that will settle on its own and thinning that will not. They look similar in the shower and they are completely different problems.

What seasonal shedding actually is

Hair grows in cycles. At any moment most of it is actively growing and a small proportion has entered the resting phase, which ends with the hair being released — roughly fifty to a hundred a day in normal circumstances.

Studies tracking hair cycles across the year have found the proportion in that resting phase peaks around late summer, and because there is a delay of about three months between a hair entering rest and being shed, the shedding itself shows up in autumn. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why the timing is so consistent that people notice it year after year.

It resolves without treatment. Density returns over the following few months and nothing you buy will speed it up meaningfully.

When it is not seasonal

This is the part worth reading properly.

Telogen effluvium is a diffuse shed that follows a trigger by two to three months — an illness, a general anaesthetic, childbirth, a period of poor eating, significant stress, a new medication. It is dramatic, frightening, and almost always temporary. Identifying the trigger is more useful than treating the hair.

Pattern hair loss looks different. Rather than coming out evenly all over, the part widens, the temples recede, or the crown thins while the back and sides stay dense. It is gradual rather than sudden, it does not recover on its own, and this is the one where timing genuinely matters.

Anything with a scalp symptom — itching, burning, tenderness, scaling, or patches of complete smooth loss — is a different category again and needs looking at rather than waiting out.

Worth checking before you spend money

Several ordinary things cause hair to shed and are simple to test for: low ferritin, thyroid dysfunction, vitamin D deficiency and anaemia among them. Treating the hair while leaving the cause in place is a waste of both your money and several months.

If shedding has continued for more than six months, or if the pattern is uneven rather than diffuse, that is the point to have it looked at properly rather than to buy another shampoo.

Where PRP does and does not help

We will be straightforward about this: PRP is not the treatment for seasonal shedding. Seasonal shedding recovers by itself, and treating it would be selling you something you do not need.

PRP is for follicles that are still alive but miniaturising — early pattern loss, in other words. It works on what is there and cannot restore what has already gone, which is why the people who benefit most are the ones who come early. There is a full account of what it involves in our guide to PRP hair treatment.

Getting it assessed

A consultation with Dr Haroon Ashraf, a GMC-registered doctor, starts with working out which of the above you actually have — including the possibility that the answer is to do nothing and wait.

The clinic is on Holmesdale Road in Reigate, open seven days a week, and patients travel to us from across Surrey: Redhill and Merstham under ten minutes away, with Dorking, Banstead, Leatherhead, Horley and Caterham all within a comfortable drive.