I often hear from people with prolonged or chronic telogen effluvium who can’t help but notice a worrying change in their hair texture. They often describe their hair as brittle, dry or loose and want to know what they can do to make it look better. I heard of someone who said, “My hair has been falling out horribly for about seven months now. I’m pretty sure I have chronic telogen effluvium because my hair started falling out after I lost a lot of weight. My hair has become very dry, brittle and fly away. What is causing this texture? And what can I do about it?” I will try to answer these questions in the following article.

Why hair that is falling out can take on a new and undesirable texture: The most common reason hair becomes strangely textured, dry or loose when it is falling out is because it is entering the “resting” or shedding phase of its life cycle. You may already know this, but bear with me. Hair has different phases throughout its life cycle as follows: the anagen or growth phase; the catagen or transitional phase (where you’re not growing or shedding) and the telogen or resting phase (where you’re definitely shedding). This is the phase in which the hair falls out to make room for new hair. Therefore, hair in the latter part of the telogen phase can become drier because it is not as deeply embedded in the scalp and is not being actively nourished. (It doesn’t have to be, as it will soon fall off.)

However, when you have telogen effluvium (or the chronic variety), you have many more hairs than normal in that resting phase, and this means that you will have many more hairs than normal that are not being actively nourished. Therefore, the overall appearance of your hair may be brittle or dry, even if not all the hairs on your head fit that description. There are other things that could contribute to this as well. Some hair loss treatments will very aggressively dry out your scalp and hair. Some of these topicals have anti-androgen components that are intended to remove excess oil and sebum from the scalp. And while they can do a good job of this, the result can often be that the product is almost too drying on the scalp and hair.

What can you do about brittle or flying hair? There are a couple of tricks I can offer you. If your hair is long, let it dry in a ponytail or rolled up in a towel if the ponytail pulls out too much hair. Letting your hair dry pulled back will often help it behave much better when it’s dry. Also, you can use gel to tame those flyaways or even spray on a conditioner that is very light. Lastly, if you can’t even stand the look of the hair, wear it up or back to keep it manageable. Also, sometimes wearing it wavy or curly will help camouflage some of the indiscipline or dryness. Finally, I’ve found that putting a little coconut or emu oil on your hands and smoothing it over the ruffles can help a lot. You just have to be very careful to use a very small amount or your hair could look greasy. Also, try not to put too much oil on your scalp as you don’t want to clog your follicles.