Imagine waking up one day and noticing your hairline had receded by an inch. Sounds unbelievable, but that’s what happened to me a few years ago. I was on autopilot with my morning skincare routine when I noticed the scar on my scalp—which has been hidden by my hair since I got it at age five—was suddenly very visible. I was shocked, worried and rather confused. There weren’t hundreds of hairs on my pillow, so obviously, I hadn’t lost all of that hair overnight, but how had I not noticed until that morning that I’d been losing my hair? I rushed to my phone to look back at pictures of myself, and I realised my hairline had been thinning consistently over the course of a decade. And now I had been left with areas completely devoid of hair, and patches with very little hair left at all.
I hotfooted it to see a dermatologist who explained I likely had traction alopecia. “It’s a form of hair loss caused by chronic tension or pulling on the hair follicle, usually caused by tight hairstyles like ponytails, weaves, braids, or even tight head coverings,” explains consultant dermatologist Dr Sharon Belmo. Turns out that the hairline is particularly vulnerable to this traction-related damage, as “the hair follicles are finer, more delicate and exposed to the greatest amount of tension in many hairstyles. These hairs also tend to have a shorter growth cycle than other hairs on the scalp,” adds Belmo.
