Is hair loss a post covid symptom & if it is when does it sto

[KatyMac]

13 weeks since my positive and I am losing lots of hair

Far more than I have ever lost before; I can see that I've lost hair

I keep finding clumps of it - it is not nice!

Is it post covid? Will it stop? WHEN?

I’ve been having the same thing. 4 weeks from first symptoms. I think it can be normal after a virus but might be worth getting medical advice if you’re worried.

Yes I know fee people who experienced this and it went on for months. From what I know, it's mainly a body's response to viral infections

I have a lot of hair!

Which is good because although I can see how much I have lost most other people cant but also I leave such a lot behind me; I tie it up to cook at home and when I get up in the morning I have to clear my pillow off

My brush needs hair pulling out mid-brush it's so daft

Yes I had this. It’s called Telogen Effluvium and it’s where your hair cycle is disrupted by illness or trauma. Mine lasted for about 2 months - it felt like so much was coming out, I was scared to wash my hair. I started to take hair supplement vitamins (including Biotin) - not sure if this helped or not but it gradually slowed and now my hair is thicker than ever.

I am losing loads of hair and I had covid 4 months ago. I thought there wzs a connection as almost any serious illness can trigger hair loss. A friend had sepsis and lost about 2/3 of her hair.

Me too. Started about a month after covid, it’s been two months now since the hair loss started and isn’t letting up.

Yes I think its been about 5 or 6 weeks

Hope you guys are holding up! It's causing me no end of anxiety

@KatyMac I’ve just washed my hair. Still losing so much hair, I counted and it’s 15 weeks ago I had covid, and no sign of it slowing down. I’ve had a blood test and no deficiencies as such, although iron and zinc are on the lower end of normal and tsh on the higher side, so I’m taking a multi vit with iron now and hope that it helps.
I’ll let you know when mine goes back to normal.

I'm only a couple of weeks behind you

I take zinc, iron, methyl folate and actually a handful of others I am historically low in all of them due to a malabsorbion

My ponytail takes an extra twist on my bobble!

This is not good!

Yes, I lost about half of my very thick head of hair! I can’t actually believe how thin my pony tail is - I used to struggle to get a bobble around twice and now it goes round four times. I lost so much in one wash I made a GP appointment but whilst waiting for it, it has (touchwood) slowed down and I can see new baby hairs coming through so I cancelled. It’s actually way more distressing than I thought it would be.

Yes, I started shedding hair about a month after I was ill - my centre parting looked huge and I had fluffy, sparse hair and a skinny pony tail too!

I started taking biotin every day, and the shedding went on for about 2-3 months then stopped. Its now been over a year and it's sort of back to normal - the length and thickness has returned, although I notice it is a bit weaker now.

One of the perks of bloody covid.

Yes, my hairdresser and I both noticed my hair was much sparser after Covid. It then started to grow back like post chemo hair, very thin and wispy, where before it used to be thick and coarse.
It is still growing more slowly than normal (I have had long Covid for nearly 2 years), and I only need a haircut every 2 months instead of 6 weeks. But the individual hairs are back to normal thickness.

I had this after a bad bout of food poisoning years ago. I reckoned I lost about a third of my hair in all. If my memory is correct, you'll lose all the hair that was at a particular growth phase when you were ill, then it will stop and grow back.

Sorry to say but the regrowth was worse than the loss for me, I had a frizzy halo for months, looked like a bloody clown.

It's awful so distressing!

Sorry everyone 😔 hate that we are all in this together

Round my temples is horrid so thin and wispy

I wonder how mine will grow back as my hair is very fine anyway, there just used to be lots of my very fine hair!
When I was a xhild 2 hairdressers got into a discussion about my hair and sectioned off a square inch, then tried to count the hairs - apparently I have the same number of follicles as everyone else but I have 3 or 4 hairs growing out of each 1!

Or I did!

Forgot to say, with my hair, I also lost my sense of taste and smell. That’s very slowly started coming back, I can taste sweet and salty, but not much else. Anyone else?

No I only lost mine for the first 3/4 weeks then it came back but my appetite is still a bit ropey
And as for exhaustion!

I have this too. The shower mat tends to be covered in hair. I had covid at the start of December. I'm hoping that the rate of loss is slowing now.

I've still got other symptoms, like loss of taste and smell.