I lost enormous amounts of hair after each baby, but it seemed to recover after I stopped nursing. Maybe that’s when my hormones leveled out. I also lost hair when the doctor put me on Wellbutrin for my fibromyalgia…and of course there was that chemo thingie…
Sorry I’m so late to respond to this (having been pre-occupied with extraordinarily stressful things recently) but, frankly, this “everyone has stress” dismissal is patronizing at best.
Yes, we all have stress. There is, however, a HUGE difference between “traffic this morning was bad and I broke a fingernail” and “I am unemployed, in debt, and a close family member is dying”. The idea that the latter extreme can’t contribute to a health problem or exacerbate a symptom is a pile of warm, steaming weehockey. Extreme levels of stress can and do have a physical impact on the body.
My sister is a family practitioner MD. One of the first things she asks an ill patient is “what is going on in your life besides this?” because unusual or intense stress can and does affect health. Does it make peoples’ hair fall out? Certainly not in all cases, but it could contribute to thinks like poor nutrition which certainly can affect hair (among other things).
My first thought when I saw the thread title was “baby.” 4 months is about the right time to typically go through a hormone shift. Even if you didn’t get the thick hair during pregnancy, when we are pregnant, we tend to lose less hair. Figure you usually shed a certain amount of strands in a day (just say, 100 or so.) During pregnancy you lose less on average, so say you are only losing 50 strands now. A few months after birth, your hormone levels start to go back to pre-pregnancy states and that ‘extra’ hair is going to come out now. I had that happen around 4-6 months post partum with both of my kids, it seems like you are losing tons of hair, but it is just the hair that you didn’t lose during pregnancy. It should stop after a few weeks and new hair will come in (I have lots of those fuzzy new baby hairs all around my face for the first year after a baby.)
You can ask your Dr. if you are worried, but I bet it is just your hormones going back to normal. Here is an article about losing hair after giving birth:
If I had read one more post before jumping in, I would have seen that Hirundo82 aleady took care of fighting that little piece of ignorance that just turned out to be laziness.
I had pretty extensive diffuse hair loss either during or after a very critical illness. My hair did eventually thicken back up, but not to the same extent it was. Before illness I could barely get my hair in a long banana clip (shows how long ago this happened - does anyone even remember banana clips?) and after I could easily get it into a short one.
Wasn’t such a bad thing, though - my hair was always too thick before. Now it’s just right.
BTW - most of my fingernails and toenails came off, too, but luckily for me, those grew back!