Is my shedding normal?

The actual number varies among people 

I'm often asked what constitutes normal shedding. Of course, many people have in their mind that 100 is the magical cut off and anything less is normal and anything more is abnormal. This is really too simplistic. The first principle is that anyone's normal is what they used to shed in the past. The problem is it's hard for patients to know the number of hairs they lost 3, 5 and 10 years ago because they weren't focused on their hair back then. But if a patient loss 20 hairs per day in the past, and now loses 55, that represents abnormal shedding.

Generally speaking, most people lose 25-65 hairs per day and 50-150 on a showering day. But this number depends on how often the patient shampoos his or her hair. If one shampoos their hair once per week, many hundreds of hairs lost while showering could still be within the realm of normal. If the patient shampoos once per month, the number could be very large.  

Conclusion

The key point for patients to be aware of is that if they feel something is different than the past and they believe that they never had this rate of loss before, then there is a good chance it’s abnormal.