Can Shaving Your Head Lead to Hair Loss?

There are many things a person could do to promote hair loss, stress being among the chief factors. But shaving the head will not increase or decrease your hair health.

First things first: Shaving your head will not lead to baldness. And despite the old wives’ tale that shaving a child’s head will lead to thicker hair growth is equally false: it’s a tale, unsupported by evidence. The human head is not a forsythia bush.

There are so many other, real and true reasons why people lose their hair, leading them to seek out hair loss treatments for men or hair loss solutions for women at the local hair loss treatment clinic. Those treatments include hair loss surgery, laser hair loss therapy and nonsurgical hair systems. There’s no reason whatsoever to make up or create reasons for losing hair, but there are always new myths created that others are only too happy to spread. This is one of them.

The reasons that shaving a head has no real impact on hair growth boils down to basic dermatology science. The thickness and pace of growth for hair are functions of follicular structures, genetics, hormones, the person’s overall health, and the absence of injuries and infections. The strands of hair we see are essentially the product of those factors. So, shaving off the hair has no impact on what’s going on below the surface of the skin – it will not be thicker or thinner.

That said, there are hair styling tricks that experienced hair stylists know when working with customers who are confronting hair thinning. They include:

Finding the optimal length. When hair is long the weight of the follicles – as well as residual hair product that adds to the weight – tend to make the hair seem thinner. Shorter hair styles, conversely, create an appearance of thicker fullness.

Layering and texturing. Layers create dimension and a perception of volume. The use of point cutting and razoring create texture, lightness, and volume.

Curling. Use of curling techniques – with a curling iron or wand, with hot rollers, hair rollers, crimpers, damp hair braiding, twisting, pin curls, and curlformers – are ways to create volume. But this comes with a warning to not overuse chemicals and drying techniques, as they can cause hair breakage.

Hair products. Several types of products applied to hair – mousses, root lifters, volumizing sprays – add texture and lift to the hair, particularly when applied to the roots.   

Blow drying, especially with a round brush. A method to increase the volume of longer hair is to flip the hair over a bowed head, dry it from that side and use a round brush to lift hair from its roots to make it fuller.

Complementing all of this is to maintain healthy habits that you might associate more with a waistline than a hairline. Through proper nutrition, sleep, and exercise, the flow of nutrients and oxygen to the roots of hair follicles contribute significantly to hair health. And perhaps the biggest enemy of hair health is stress, therefore it makes sense to reduce that.

So put away buzz cutters and other radical hair treatments that claim to thicken hair. There are smarter ways to achieve thicker hair.