What accounts for sudden hair loss?
When hair falls out overnight or within a few days, it could be infection, reactions to medicine or the onset of hereditary baldness. But it’s usually either telogen effluvium or alopecia areata. Telogen effluvium is a condition in which hair moves quickly through the growth cycle, then falls out. It tends to affect new mothers, people on low-protein diets, people having an adverse reaction to medicine or those suffering from very high fevers. How does that differ from alopecia areata? If the hair loss is patchy, the early diagnosis is usually alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease. If the hair loss is extensive, only careful study will determine whether it is telogen effluvium or alopecia areata, which comes in different forms and widely differing severities. Patients with short-term patchy disease may be genetically different from patients with extensive disease of long duration. The most common is a patchy, nonscarring hair loss in which one or more circular patches of hair fall out
