Losing short hairs: is it normal or should I be concerned?

Should I be concerned if I find I am losing short hair?

I’ve selected this question below for this week’s question of the week. It allows us to the review some key concepts in evaluating shed hairs - particularly the relevance of short hairs.

Question

I noticed that I a few of the hairs that I find in my brush are short hairs - less than 3 cm. Is this evidence that I am progressing to androgenetic alopecia?

Answer

Thanks for the question.

It all depends on the proportion of short hairs you find.

If you find a low proportion of small hairs, that’s completely normal. Everyone sheds a few short hairs.

If you collect all your shed hair over a week and find that more than 10 % are tiny hairs less than 3 cm, that might suggest there is some androgenetic hair loss happening. You’d certainly want to review things with your dermatologist carefully if that were the case and have him or her performing a careful scalp examination including trichoscsopy.

But finding one hair has very little meaning otherwise.