Hair growth after starting a treatment: new growth or breakage?

New growth has pointy ends

Picture the following situation.  A patient has started a new treatment a few months ago. Now, they see many hairs on the scalp that are short and the question arises "Are these new hairs or broken hairs?"

I hear this all that time. I can say confidently that the vast majority of times, it's new hairs!  To have so many hairs on the scalp with broken ends requires a lot of damage (from heat, chemical, etc).  That's not common. 

Sometimes, I can sit across the room from a patient who just started treatment a few months ago and see many many hairs standing straight up. Are they broken? Never! To have that many broken  hairs would be odd. Without even looking at the scalp, I know the treatments is working?

The above photos shows the difference between new hairs and broken hairs. New hairs are pointy and broken hairs are ... broken! ... and have blunt ends.