Imagine having suffered from excessive weight throughout your life. You probably tried every diet regime, exercise programmes, and maybe even magic pills repeatedly. You finally decide to do something rather bold about it and costly with a surgeon. They recommend weight loss surgery; you are nervous but still go after it.
With all your fear still you, you go into the operation room. They give you an anaesthesia mask end tell you ‘everything is going to be okay’ before it all cuts to black. You wake up, barely remembering why you were sleeping in the first place. But you recall quickly due to the soreness.
The swelling and the soreness make it difficult to see, but you don’t feel that much big anymore. You continue hearing the doctor’s recommendations and rest. Now, after weeks the swelling is gone, and you can appreciate your new figure. But something else is gone too, your hair.
Why? After what took you so much courage to go through with it, why are you losing hair when you only intended to lose weight? Do not panic. Your weight loss surgery can cause hair loss; in fact, it is common for it to do so. The way comes down to a couple of reasons.
Hair Loss Caused by Weight Loss
The hair on our bodies grows in a cyclical phase. The anagen phase is the one where the hair is actively growing, and it can take several years for it to stop entirely on one set of hair. The telogen phase, meanwhile, is where our hair has ceased to grow and is now’ resting’ and waiting for new hair to replace it.
Normally around 90% of our hair will be in the Anagen phase, while around 10% will be on the resting phase. But that change owing to some factors, a couple of them tied to your weight loss surgery that can cause hair loss.
Two things steaming form your weight loss surgery can cause hair loss. First, the obvious physical trauma your body has been subject to. Even though the hair is very important for us appearance-wise, it is not vital for our body. Therefore, our body diverges resources from elsewhere and uses it in the areas that went through trauma during surgery. As a result, much hair that was on the anagen (growing) phase ceases to grow since it does not have many nutrients available now.
At this point, that hair enters prematurely into the telogen (resting) phase. It will remain there for 120 days before falling completely. This is one of the hair loss caused by your weight loss surgery you are likely seeing.
And secondly, your nutrient intakes it’s likely to take a hit after your surgery. Chance are you will have to adjust your diet to one more post-op appropriate, or you won’t simply feel like eating much. Whichever of the two, the lower level of nutrients compounds with the trauma recovery making even more hair enter the resting phase.
Treating Hair Loss Caused by Your Weight Loss Surgery
There is no way of preventing the possibility of hair loss if the surgery happens, there are chances for regrowth, too. The good news is that there’s little need to treat it after the surgery, it will come back on its own.
After the shedding of all the resting hair, new hair will take its place after recovery of the body and the nutrient intake levels. After four to six months, your mane will likely be back sitting its former thickness. You should simply focus on carrying out a successful post-op recovery.