And after that first time, you start seeing it everywhere. I lose so much hair every time I brush it, run my fingers through it, basically touch it, that I've gotten to a point that I almost exclusively keep it in a bun so it's not just falling out... And don't get me started with the quiet maths I do every single wash — is this more than last time?
And underneath all of it, the two thoughts that actually keep you awake at night: Is it ever going to stop? And if it stops — is it ever going to come back?
Here's the part I still find hard to admit. I lost three stone on a GLP-1 after fifteen years of trying, and I finally had my body back. And I'd have handed some of it straight back to make the hair loss stop. It didn't feel like vanity — it felt like watching myself vanish, while every single person I asked told me it was nothing to worry about.
Because that's the other cruelty of it, isn't it? You go to your doctor and get "it's common with rapid weight loss — give it time." You ask around, and everyone says "take biotin."Nobody tells you why it's really happening. Nobody tells you whether it ends. And nobody warned you it was coming in the first place.
I typed the whole humiliating story into one of the GLP-1 groups I'd joined and never once posted in. I pressed send, and felt sick.
Within the hour, something shifted that I can't really explain to you unless you've felt it. Reply after reply came in — the same photos of the same brushes, the same drains, the same sentence over and over: "I thought it was just me." Thousands of us. All losing our hair. All handed the same two useless instructions. And scattered right through them were the women who'd come out the other side — the ones whose hair had quietly come back. I wasn't broken, and I wasn't alone. I'd just been looking in the wrong place for the answer. So I started reading everything those women had done.