Concern B
Thinning hair, and what is actually causing it
A widening parting, a receding hairline, more hair in the shower than there used to be. There are four or five common reasons for it, they are treated very differently, and telling them apart is the first job. Some of them belong to a doctor before they belong to us.
Compare the options Scalp micropigmentation
Reviewed by Dr Natalie Olivera, BDS (Hons) MFDS RCS (Eng), general dentist and Level 7 aesthetics clinician · August 2026
The Growth Cycle
What matters is not what falls out. It is what grows back in its place.
Hair is not one thing. It is a hundred thousand separate clocks.
Every follicle on your head runs its own cycle, independent of the ones beside it. Understanding that cycle explains almost everything about hair loss, including why it takes months to notice and months to recover.
Grow, rest, shed, repeat.
A follicle grows a hair for two to six years, rests for a few weeks, sheds it, and starts again. At any moment about nine in ten of your follicles are growing and the rest are resting. Because they are out of step with each other, hair never all leaves at once.
Losing hair every day is normal.
Fifty to a hundred hairs a day is ordinary. It looks like more when you wash less often, because a few days of shedding arrives at once. Counting what comes out tells you very little on its own.
Thinning is a change in the replacement.
In most hair loss the follicle does not die. It shrinks. Each cycle it produces a shorter, finer, paler hair, until what it makes is too fine to cover anything. That process is called miniaturisation, and it is why thinning creeps up on people.
The Patterns
Where the hair is going tells you most of what is causing it.
Pattern hair loss. Inherited sensitivity to androgens, and by far the most common cause. In men it takes the temples and the crown. In women it usually widens the parting and thins across the top while the front hairline stays. It arrives slowly, over years.
Telogen effluvium. A shock pushes many follicles into their resting phase at the same time, and they shed together two to three months later. Illness, high fever, surgery, childbirth, rapid weight loss and severe stress all do it. It usually recovers on its own within six to nine months.
Traction. Tight ponytails, braids, weaves and extensions pull on the follicle for years. It shows at the hairline and the temples first, and it is often mistaken for pattern loss. Caught early it recovers fully. Left long enough it scars, and then it does not.
Something medical. An underactive or overactive thyroid, low iron stores, and autoimmune conditions such as alopecia areata all cause hair loss. So do several medications. These are found with a blood test and a proper look at the scalp, not by studying the mirror.
More than one of these can run at the same time, which is the usual reason a single explanation never quite fits.
Before Any Clinic
A scarring cause destroys the follicle. Time is the one thing that cannot be bought back.
Have the blood test before anyone takes your money.
Hair loss is one of the few cosmetic complaints that is regularly a medical sign. No clinic should sell you a plan for it without first asking what caused it, and if we cannot answer that, we will say so.
Sudden loss, or loss in patches, is a GP appointment. Coin-sized bald patches, a scalp that is sore, itchy, scaly or shiny, or hair that came out in handfuls over a few weeks. Those are not cosmetic problems and they should not wait for a consultation with us.
Ask for bloods. A full blood count, ferritin, thyroid function and vitamin D are the usual set. They are ordinary tests, they are cheap, and they either find a cause that can be corrected or they take four possibilities off the table.
Scarring loss is a race. Some conditions destroy the follicle rather than shrink it, and a follicle that has scarred over cannot be brought back by anything, at any price. If the scalp looks smooth and shiny where hair has gone, get it seen quickly.
Correcting the cause sometimes ends the problem. Iron and thyroid are the clearest examples. Treat those and the hair often returns without a clinic being involved at all. That is a better outcome than anything on our tariff.
The Options
Two of these four are not treatments we sell. That is not modesty, it is what the table honestly says.
Four routes, including leaving it alone.
| Medically managed treatment | Scalp micropigmentation | Hair transplant | Doing nothing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it actually changes | Slows the loss and can thicken what is left | Nothing on the scalp. It changes what the eye sees | Moves your own follicles from the back of the head to the front | Nothing. The pattern carries on as it was |
| How long it takes | Three to six months before any fair judgement | Two to four visits, ten days apart | A day in surgery, then nine to twelve months to see the result | No time at all |
| How long it lasts | Only for as long as you keep going | Three to five years, then a shorter refresh | Moved hair is usually permanent, but the hair around it keeps thinning | Permanent, in the other direction |
| What it costs you in time | Ongoing, forever, in small daily amounts | A handful of hours in total, then a refresh | One procedure and a long wait | Nothing |
| Who provides it | A doctor, after an examination and a prescription | This clinic | A surgical clinic — we do not do this | Nobody |
| The honest downside | It must be prescribed, and the side effects are a conversation to have with the prescriber, not with us | It does not grow a single hair, and it needs sun protection to hold its colour | Surgery, and it depends on having enough donor hair at the back | None, if you have made your peace with it |
These combine well. Medically managed treatment holds the hair you still have while pigment covers the ground you have already lost. Neither one makes the other unnecessary.
What We Actually Do
The scan comes first because a plan drawn from a photograph is a guess.
Micropigmentation changes what the eye sees. It does not grow hair.
Thousands of pigment points, matched to your own hair colour and placed one at a time, so that a thinning crown reads as density and a widening parting closes visually. It touches nothing below the surface. It does not reach the follicle, it does not slow the loss, and it will not change what your hair does next.
That limit is the whole reason we ask what is causing the thinning before we place anything. If the loss is still moving quickly, the pattern underneath the pigment keeps changing, and the honest advice is to wait or to treat medically first. If the cause was iron or thyroid, the hair may come back on its own and there is nothing for us to do.
The AI scalp scan is free and takes about fifteen minutes. A magnified camera reads density, follicle health and where the thinning is travelling, and you watch the same screen we do. It is also how we tell you that pigment is not your answer, which happens often enough to be worth saying out loud.
Questions
Thinning hair, answered.
How much hair loss a day is normal?
Between fifty and a hundred hairs. It looks like far more when you wash your hair twice a week, because several days of shedding come out together. A better test than counting is whether the parting has widened or the ponytail has thinned over a year.
My hair started falling out three months after I was ill. Why the delay?
Because the shock pushes follicles into their resting phase, and a resting hair sits in place for two to three months before it is pushed out. The shedding you are seeing now was decided back then. In most cases it recovers within six to nine months.
Will my hair come back after having a baby?
Usually, yes. Pregnancy holds hairs in their growing phase for longer than normal, and after birth they all leave at once. It looks alarming and it is not damage. Most women are back to their usual density somewhere between six and twelve months afterwards.
Do I need a blood test before you will treat me?
Not always, but we will ask what has been ruled out. If the loss was sudden, patchy, or came with tiredness, weight change or heavy periods, we will ask you to see a GP first. Placing pigment over an untreated thyroid problem helps nobody.
Does scalp micropigmentation regrow hair?
No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. It is pigment placed in the upper layer of the skin. It changes what the eye reads as density and does nothing to the follicles at all. It works alongside medical treatment, not instead of it.
Can women have scalp micropigmentation?
Yes, and it is some of the most satisfying work we do. In women it is almost always the parting and diffuse thinning across the top rather than a hairline. Pigment placed between existing hairs closes the gaps the eye reads as scalp. Nothing has to be shaved.
Should I have it done while I am still losing hair?
Often not yet. The pattern underneath keeps moving, so what looks right this year can look wrong in two. If the loss is active we will usually suggest treating it medically first and seeing you again in six months. That advice costs us a booking and we give it anyway.
Do you do hair transplants?
No. That is surgery and it belongs in a surgical clinic with a surgeon. If a transplant is the better answer for you we will say so at the scan. We can also work on the scar afterwards, which is a common reason people come to us later.
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