Why Is Your Hair Shedding More This Month? The Autumn Shed, Explained
If you have spent the past fortnight eyeing the plughole with mild alarm, you are in good company. Late September is reliably the busiest point of the year for hair shedding questions, and there is a measurable biological reason for that rather than a run of bad luck.
Seasonal shedding is one of the better documented patterns in hair biology. Knowing what is normal, what is not, and at which point it stops being worth waiting out is genuinely useful. So here is the honest version.
The short version
Hair grows in cycles, and a larger than usual share of follicles enter the resting phase during late summer.
Those resting hairs are released roughly two to three months later, which puts the visible shed in September and October.
A seasonal shed is diffuse, spread across the whole scalp, and usually settles within six to twelve weeks.
Shedding that runs past three months, or that comes with a widening parting, deserves proper assessment.
Low iron stores, thyroid dysfunction, low vitamin D, recent illness, childbirth, rapid weight loss and significant stress are all recognised contributors, and several of them are straightforward to test for.
Why hair sheds more in autumn
Every follicle works through a growth phase (anagen), a short transition (catagen) and a resting phase (telogen). At any given moment most of your hair is growing and a minority is resting. When a resting hair is eventually displaced by the new one forming beneath it, that is an ordinary shed rather than damage.
What shifts with the seasons is the proportion. Trichogram studies have repeatedly found the highest telogen percentages in late summer and early autumn. Courtois and colleagues followed a small group of subjects for up to fourteen years and found August to October consistently carried the highest resting-phase counts, with December to February the lowest. A much larger analysis by Piérard-Franchimont and Piérard, covering several thousand people across two consecutive years, described the same rise between July and October.
Because a telogen hair sits in place for some weeks before it is released, a peak in resting hairs during August surfaces as visible shedding in September and October. That built-in delay is precisely why the autumn shed feels as though it has arrived from nowhere.
How much shedding is actually normal?
The figure usually quoted is fifty to a hundred hairs a day. Treat that as a rough orientation rather than a clinical threshold, and please do not start counting. The pattern and the trajectory tell you far more than the number.
A seasonal shed is diffuse. More hair in the brush, the shower and on your jumper, but no bald patches, no scaling, no itch and no obvious change in the width of your parting. It should also be self-limiting, easing over roughly six to twelve weeks as the emptied follicles move back into growth. Regrowth then takes months to become visible, because hair grows at somewhere near a centimetre a month and will not be hurried.
When autumn shedding is not just autumn shedding
Telogen effluvium is the clinical term for excess shedding driven by follicles being nudged into the resting phase earlier than they should be. Seasonal change is one trigger. It is not the only one, and the others are worth ruling out rather than assuming.
Shedding that continues beyond about three months, or that is worsening rather than settling.
A parting that is visibly widening, or thinning concentrated at the crown, which points towards pattern hair loss rather than a shed.
Patches of complete hair loss, redness, scaling, pain or itching, all of which need a dermatological opinion rather than a skincare plan.
Shedding that began two to three months after an illness with fever, a general anaesthetic, a bereavement, childbirth or a period of rapid weight loss.
Heavy or prolonged periods, restrictive eating, or a vegetarian or vegan diet without careful planning, all of which raise the likelihood of low iron stores.
The British Association of Dermatologists sets out the usual contributors clearly in its patient information on telogen effluvium, and NHS guidance takes a similar line. Iron deficiency, thyroid dysfunction, low vitamin D, low B12 and low zinc all appear on that list, which is why a blood test is frequently a more sensible first step than another shampoo.
What actually helps
The honest answer first: for a straightforward seasonal shed, the principal intervention is time. The follicles have not gone anywhere. They are between jobs.
Identify and correct anything underlying. Ferritin, a full blood count, thyroid function and vitamin D are a reasonable starting panel, interpreted alongside your history rather than read in isolation.
Eat enough, and eat enough protein. Hair is metabolically low-priority tissue, and it is among the first things the body deprioritises when intake drops.
Be gentle mechanically. Tight styles, vigorous brushing on wet hair and daily heat will break hair that is already loose. None of that causes a telogen shed, but it makes the result look considerably worse.
Treat supplements with a degree of scepticism. Correcting a documented deficiency is worthwhile. High-dose biotin when you are not deficient is not, and it can interfere with several laboratory immunoassays, including thyroid and troponin testing, which is a real clinical nuisance rather than a theoretical one.
Get a diagnosis before you get a treatment. Pattern hair loss, telogen effluvium and scarring alopecias look different on examination and are managed very differently.
Common questions
Is autumn shedding permanent? For a typical seasonal shed, no. The follicles remain and re-enter the growth phase, although visible recovery is slow because hair simply does not grow quickly.
Should I wash my hair less often? No. Washing does not cause shedding. It collects hairs that had already released, so washing less often just relocates the pile from the shower to the hairbrush.
Can stress really do this? Yes. Significant physical or psychological stress is a well-recognised trigger for telogen effluvium, characteristically with a two to three month gap between the event and the shedding, which is why people often fail to connect the two.
Do I need an appointment for a seasonal shed? Usually not. Book one if the shedding has run past three months, if your parting is widening, or if you would rather have the underlying bloods checked properly than guessed at.
Where we fit in
Every autumn we see a predictable rise in hair questions across Bakewell and the wider Peak District, and a fair proportion of them turn out to be exactly what the calendar suggests. At Haus of Ästhetik, hair concerns begin with a consultation and, where it is clinically appropriate, blood testing, so that whatever follows rests on a diagnosis rather than an assumption. Occasionally the most useful outcome of that appointment is being told to wait, with a reason attached.
This article is general skincare information and is not a substitute for individual medical advice. Any treatment is provided only after a personal consultation and suitability assessment. Haus of Ästhetik, Bakewell, Derbyshire.
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