Hello all! I completed a 21 day water at the end of June/beginning of July. About a week or two ago I started losing A LOT of hair, like excessive, scary amounts. Looking at google it looks like weight loss can be a potential cause of excessive shedding like this, and I began to wonder if it has anything to do with my fast. So I’m reaching out to ask if anyone else has experienced something similar, thanks!
Any weight loss will mess up your hair growth. Of course eating nothing is the fastest way to lose weight so your hair falls out the fastest. Luckily it will grow back when you go back to a maintenance diet with all vitamins and minerals. The only caveat is you are a balding male then the hairs that have started to go downhill won’t come back so you will be way thinner even after recovery.
Yeap, it’s a temporary condition called “telogen effluvium” (you should get an automatic comment about it any time soon)
I’ve experienced twice: once when I did keto for a couple of years and lost a significant amount of weight, second time last year (around this time of year, actually) I did about 2 1/2 months of rolling 3 day fasts. This will happen due to ANY significant, successful weight loss, it’s not because of keto or fasts or any other diet. People who lose very slowly don’t notice because their progress is slow enough that their hair replaces itself well within that time. If you start losing weight, then the body will stop prioritizing hair growth to focus on other things within the body.
The good thing is that it’s temporary, once you reach your goal weight, or you stop losing weight, or worst case scenario, you start gaining weight, it stops.
If your goal is weight loss, and you don’t want it to take years, then this is something to just accept while progress is being made.
Yea that happens on long fasts. So long as you aren’t into male pattern baldness territory, it should grow back in the next hair cycle. Rubbing Minoxidil in the scalp once a day can help with the regrowth. Its an over the counter drug, Rogaine I think is a popular brand.
Personally I’ve just accepted and embraced the whole hair thinning and loss thing (been perpetually stressed for god knows how long, fasting only helped me realize I was stressed and also had an eating disorder I think, and obligatory notice I am not fasting with an existing eating disorder and stuff), and I just decided to shave off all the hair and eventually get around to getting a wig, seems neato.