I was recently contacted by someone who had suffered extensive hair loss. The person was very hopeful that he would soon recover and hoped that he would start to see new growth in the next few days. The problem was that they had read that when your hair starts to grow back, it’s normal to experience itchiness, tingling, and tightness during the process. This person was not feeling any of these things. His scalp felt totally normal and she wondered if he should worry about this. She wanted to know if the fact that he wasn’t experiencing itchiness or other bothersome symptoms meant that his hair wasn’t growing back. I will tell you what I told him in the following article.
It can be normal to feel itchy when new growth begins, but it doesn’t always happen and its absence doesn’t always mean something is wrong: The truth is that it is quite common to experience some discomfort as new growth begins, especially if you have had extensive hair loss that needs to be replaced. When a large number of follicles have been affected and are now going through different parts of their cycles, this can manifest itself physically. This can result in inflammation that can manifest itself in many ways, such as the appearance of a pink or red scalp, itching, burning, tightness, tingling, or other strange sensations.
And, as hair begins to regrow and comes into contact with these follicles, these responses can become even more intense and noticeable. However, not everyone has this inflammation or experiences these responses. There are some people who don’t have as many follicles at stake or are some of those lucky people who escape this process. And sometimes the itching and tingling isn’t due to the new growth at all. They are due to inflammation and androgens contributing to hair loss in the first place.
So the absence or presence of itching is not always good or bad. It could mean new growth (which is a good thing). Or it could mean inflammation and androgens (which could be bad). Your scalp is giving you problems.
Other things besides itching that can tell you that your hair is coming back: You can take a look at a few other things to determine if the hair is growing back. You can brush back the hair from the forehead (around the fringe line) to see if there are any new baby hairs there. You can part your hair the opposite way you normally would to see if any new hair is sticking out. And you can put dry hair powder or spray on your hair (on dry hair) right before you wash it anyway to see if there are any flyaways and short strays. (The tiny hairs can sometimes be hard to see, so the white color makes it easier.)
Another thing you can do is observe the health of that regrowth. If it’s dark in color and matches the texture of the rest of your hair, then there’s a better chance that you’re not dealing with androgens (because the hair could be miniaturized in that case). And shorter, healthier hairs indicate that what you’re seeing is more likely telogen effluvium regrowth or some other aggressive hair loss that doesn’t involve androgens.