Dealing with Pregnancy-Related Hair Loss: Things to Do and Not to Do

Being a mother is a magical experience, but there is no arguing the fact that the pregnancy itself can be extremely hard on your body. Unfortunately, hair often suffers extensively due to the changes occurring to your body at this time. Pregnancy-related hair loss is a major problem that affects thousands of women and deals huge damage not only to their looks but also self-confidence. Even in cases when hair loss doesn’t become extreme, women often suffer from their locks becoming dull, brittle, and extremely oily or dry. Paired with postpartum depression, this can cause some serious trouble for your mental health.

Therefore, taking good care of your hair during and after pregnancy is important not only for your self-image but also for your actual health. This won’t be hard to do if you establish the right kind of hair care routine and use top-quality products. As pregnancy-related hair loss is caused by endocrine changes, nothing can prevent it fully. But you can reduce its intensity and speed up the restoration of your locks using the right topical treatments.

4 Tips on How to Restore Your Hair After Pregnancy

1.      Cutting your hair short

If you don’t have some bias against short hair, getting a cut is one of the best things you can do to improve your hair health postpartum. This will not only remove all split ends and generally make your hair look more attractive because only the healthy part of it remains. But you will also get to start with a ‘clean slate’. This means that you won’t have to try repairing the locks that have already been damaged beyond repair.

Get a trim in case you don’t want to cut your locks short. You should also skip tight braids, buns, and ponytails when you have enough hair length left to try any of these styles. Those can cause hair loss on their own and the damage will be extensive then your tresses are already weakened with pregnancy hormones.

2.      Switch to salon-grade products

When your hair is severely damaged, you need to provide it with maximum nutrients and other elements that can help strengthen and restore it. This means switching to professional-grade hair care products right away. These brand products contain higher concentrations of active elements, which makes them more effective overall.

It will be best if you start using such high-quality products even before the pregnancy. This will help you reduce the risks of severe hair loss (unless it’s caused by hormones). Using these products will also help keep the locks that you have as healthy and beautiful as possible.

3.      Skip heat styling (but you can keep up the coloring)

Heat styling is damaging at the best of times, so you definitely need to avoid it completely during and after pregnancy until your hair loss stops. This is another reason why cutting your hair short is such a good idea at this time. This way, it won’t need much styling and will be easier to take care of by default.

In regards to coloring as well as straightening and curling treatments, you can keep using those during pregnancy. This means that they aren’t dangerous for your baby as very little of the chemicals get into your system from those treatments.

However, they are definitely damaging to your hair. Therefore, skipping them will definitely help reduce the risk of severe hair loss. At the least, you should choose the least harsh solutions available. For example, if you can’t go without coloring your locks, choose a semi-permanent tinting solution instead of hair dye.

4.      Visit a medical professional

If you’ve tried all the things listed above and months after giving birth your hair loss isn’t abating or your hair doesn’t grow back, you need to consult a doctor. In the majority of cases, the continuing hair loss is caused by some underlying health problem, like a thyroid disorder or iron-deficiency anemia. In this case, you will need to receive specialized treatment and the issue with your hair should resolve itself.

When you aren’t suffering from any health problems, you might get a prescription for minoxidil. Be advised that this drug should be avoided when you are pregnant and nursing. You should also consider specialized laser therapy that stimulates natural hair growth. This technique is supposedly safe to use even during pregnancy.