Hi Everyone,

Those of you who color your hair, did you continue to do this when you started losing hair? Did it make you lose more hair?

I'm 90% grey and color my hair every 4 weeks. Using a semi-permenent/less harsh color won't begin to cover the grey's.

I'm wondering if putting chemicals on your head will make the hair loss worse. Do you notice more loss after coloring?

Pam

Following!

i would like to follow this as well. Great question.

Hi Everyone,

Those of you who color your hair, did you continue to do this when you started losing hair? Did it make you lose more hair?

I'm 90% grey and color my hair every 4 weeks. Using a semi-permenent/less harsh color won't begin to cover the grey's.

I'm wondering if putting chemicals on your head will make the hair loss worse. Do you notice more loss after coloring?

Pam

I'm not an expert but I wouldn't put any chemicals on your head. I had a bad experience with it (some hair loss). It's hard to say what really caused it. To be fair it could be anything. I took some hair vitamins with biotin in it from http://hairvitaminsonline.com to restore my hair health. It helped just a little bit though

Edited January 24, 201610 yr by MartinaS10

I color my hair every 4 weeks. I never had breakage at all.

The hair loss is shedding and it will happen regardless of whether you color or not. Yes, I shed a lot but it is back to being thick again and still growing in.

I will say also that the texture of my hair changed. I had body before now I have even more to the point where it is actually curly.

I saw 3 different doctors about this and there really is nothing u can do to stop it. Just take Biotin for healthy regrowth.

I have had hair loss since about 3 months and I'm at 7 months now. I've been coloring my hair every 6 weeks since the beginning and haven't noticed any change when I color it. Losing my hair makes me feel bad enough about my hair, ugly roots would just make it worse so I've chosen to keep coloring it. There hasn't been any damage to my hair, it's just shedding and I think that is just from the surgery. I actually just chopped it off pretty short and it's much better!

Thank you for your feedback! @Djmohr-my thoughts were the same, "you're going to shed whether you color or not". Good to hear a couple of you confirm this.

@@jjmama, totally agree about ugly roots and how they make you feel.

I've been taking extra B vitamins and biotin since pre-surgery in an attempt to keep hair loss to a minimum. Who knows if it will work, but it can't hurt.

Edited December 21, 201510 yr by psvzum

I asked my hair stylist about this at my last appt since she had WLS and is familiar with the process and she said I could continue since my hair is very healthy. She was excited I would lose hair because I have a lot of it and appointments take awhile. She said the bad thing will be the new hair because it will be short and virgin untreated hair (no volume and unruly). I have longish hair and she said I may want to cut it shorter to let the new hair catch up. I take Biotin but I still lose a ton of hair, my ponytail is about half the size it used to be. Small price to pay IMO.

Following

Yep - ditto to above. Have been coloring mine every 5 or 6 weeks for at least 20 years pre-op and post-op. No issues. My hair stylist is also quite glad there is less hair now. Coloring it has not hastened the loss. Go for it!

My NUT told me not to color my hair for the first 3 months because it's vulnerable to damage and coloring will cause more damage. It's hard for me to hear I shouldn't but I'm willing to wait, because I had a bad bleach job that melted off my hair and I'd rather not melt my hair off again. I've already got breakage.

I color every six weeks because I think it would look even worse with gray roots. The loss has finally slowed in month eight and there are signs of regrowth. I don't know if coloring impacted the loss because I kept coloring through the whole eight months.

I started using the non permanent color. My hair loss was pretty bad. I went from having a chia pet for hair to covering bald patches. I have tried all the shampoos and vitamins. Finally decided to just let nature run its course. I was afraid of the permanent ones only because what hair is left is very frizzy and not healthy. I am 6 mths out and the last couple of weeks I have had little hair loss. Good luck. I think it's different with everyone.

I've been doing hair for 10 years, and actually see this question a lot.

Coloring your hair only deposits into your hair. It doesn't lift or strip, so there's no damage.

However, box dyes are made with metallic dyes for extended shelf-life and at home use that can damage the hair, so I recommend either going to a professional or at least visiting a beauty supply (Sally's) and getting your color there. The sales associates can make sure you have everything you need, and it is usually actually cheaper.

Bleaching your hair can cause damage, but if it is professionally done, and well maintained, it shouldn't be an issue at all!

I have had a bunch of hair loss and have gray hair I color. At first, I didn't use anything-just went gray-lost a bunch of hair. I thought, 'Oh, this has got to be it for hair loss. (haha) I'll use semi-permanent and see what happens.' - lost not as much at a time but a bit more hair. (arrggghhh) Then I went gray again because of hair depression/anger (My hair is doomed!)-I even cut off the long locks myself (shoulder length), I was so embarrassed to go in a salon. (it was to my bra-line) I cried while looking in the mirror, then finally went to the salon to get it fixed. I had permanent color put in. The gray was NOT helping my situation. It DOES look better on that front. and she layered it to clean it up a bit. She didn't touch the top because that SO needs to grow out.

TLDR: my findings were that it doesn't matter if you put permanent color or semi permanent or NOTHING for coloring grays. If you're gonna lose hair, you're gonna lose it.

Edited December 28, 201510 yr by laurah

I didn't dye at first because I was worried about my hair falling out. It's falling out anyway.

I just colored my hair last week and haven't seen any difference at all in the amount of hair I'm losing so I will continue to color my hair.

I figure if I'm going to have to live with super thin hair for the next several months it might as well be the color I like.

Also, I use permanent not semi so it's harsher than yours.