Telogen Effluvium Recovery

I just wanted to write a post detailing my experience with TE, as I know when I was experiencing it I felt like there were very few male recovery stories. I’m 27 M, and in May 2023 had a flare up of a chronic gastro issue I’ve had since young. As a result I lost a lot of weight, approx 20lbs in 45 days. I then hit a maintenance weight with my diet, so although I’d lost a lot of weight, I was no longer losing anymore. A little under two months later, my hair began falling out extremely fast. For the first couple of weeks, I ignored it as best possible. However it became extremely intense shedding. If I ran my hand extremely gently through my hair, I’d pick up 10 hairs a time. Equally when combing my hair, I’d would pick up closer to 100 hairs. I was extremely concerned, however have had reasonably thick hair my whole life so the thinning wasn’t immediately obvious. Around 30 days into the shed, my hair had become noticeably thinner at the front along my hair line, I imagine this is relatively normal as your hairs tend to be finer their. My friends and family couldn’t tell and my partner insisted it wasn’t too bad, but ultimately when comparing photos a few months apart couldn’t deny the difference. I began using minoxidil solely along my hair line, i continued for around 3 months and the hair began to regrow. It’s probably best to say, I’m not sure if the minoxidil actually changed much, as from what I understand the hair that fell out was always going to regrow at some point. I am now at 80 days since initial shedding began. My hair is still shedding, however when I comb my hair in the morning I only pick up 10 hairs in total, which I’d probably consider normal. So the important part is what I actually did… I have a very restricted diet and I had read a lot of posts talking about how a balanced diet would be key, which naturally concerned me. My action points were to increase calorie count, at the worst point of my flare I was eating solely plain rice and chicken twice a day. So would have been getting little over 1000 calories. I pushed hard to increase my chicken consumption for protein, whilst my diet was restricted. As I came out of the flare, I expanded my diet as best possible, introducing huge quantities of potatoes. At around this time my hair was still shedding fast, I began taking vitamin D3 supplements as I have been slightly low on that before. Looking for answers I contacted the hospital to get a micronutrients screening complete, I’m sure you could get this from your GP, it just checks all vitamin and mineral levels etc. The results came back 3 weeks later and all my levels were fine. This was massively reassuring. I continued taking D3, eating more and trying to accept what would be, would be. I’d comb my hair every morning to get rid of the loosest hairs, as I found it easier to remove them in the morning, and subsequently throughout the day, less fall out. I found it hard to cope initially looking at my desk at work with my hair everywhere. My hair now, for all intents and purposes looks the same as it did before TE, it’s not quite as thick but I’m sure that will return in year to come. Appreciate this has been a long post, however I know how lost I felt initially when reading about TE. Thankfully my cycle is appearing to be close to the typical 100 days. However from everything I’ve read, identifying the trigger and resolving as early as possible is key to recovery. Best wishes and good luck to anyone experiencing TE. I would love to have pictures attached for more context, but I didn’t take any. I found having it on my phone and in focus made it much more difficult to accept.