Anaemia is when you don’t get enough oxygen in your blood. Usually, it happens when you have an iron deficiency. The main symptoms of iron deficiency and anaemia are fatigue and weakness but many people don’t realise that it can also affect the hair.
When you don’t have enough iron, your body can’t make haemoglobin, which is a protein in the red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.
And that’s the important part — your body needs oxygen to grow and repair cells in your body, including your hair follicles.
Say your body doesn’t have much oxygen in the blood. It becomes stingy with the oxygen it DOES have and becomes extra careful about how it uses it. Vital organs are just that — vital. So they get the oxygen first.
In life and death terms, hair isn’t that important to the body. So it sends less oxygen to your hair follicles in times of an iron deficiency. This lack of oxygen disrupts the hair growth cycle, prematurely ending the growing phase for many follicles and causing increased shedding.
Iron deficiency anaemia hair loss typically appears diffuse, affecting the entire scalp rather than creating concentrated bald spots or a receding hairline.
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Does Anaemia Cause Hair Loss?
Multiple studies have linked iron deficiency anaemia and hair loss. An iron deficiency limits the amount of oxygen in the blood, which may disrupt the hair growth cycle and cause hair loss.
While iron deficiency is the most common form of anaemia globally, there are other types of anaemia, including pernicious anaemia (caused by a vitamin B12 deficiency), aplastic anaemia (caused by bone marrow damage), and haemolytic anaemia (an inherited genetic condition). These conditions may also be linked to hair loss.
Anaemia hair loss hits females particularly hard, thanks to menstruation and pregnancy.
Heavy blood loss during a period can deplete iron stores over time, while pregnancy can drain the body’s iron reserves to support foetal development.
Vegetarians and vegans may also be prone to iron deficiency since foods like red meat are one of the highest and best sources of iron in the human diet.
Chronic illnesses such as kidney disease, autoimmune conditions, and inflammatory disorders can also interfere with red blood cell production and are a common cause of iron deficiency in men and postmenopausal women.
Symptoms of Iron Deficiency Hair Loss
Unlike genetic types of hair loss, the symptoms of anaemia hair loss don’t follow a particular pattern, such as a receding hairline or widening part. Instead, it’s gradual.
You might spot more hair than usual in the shower drain each day. You might find yourself pulling more strands from the hairbrush. Over time, you may notice that your hair isn’t as thick as it used to be. Alongside diffuse thinning across the whole scalp, you may struggle with weak hair that’s more brittle and much slower to regrow.
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Take the quizPreventing Hair Loss Due to Anaemia
You can only truly prevent hair loss from anaemia if you prevent or treat the underlying condition that’s causing it — whether that’s an iron or B12 deficiency, chronic illness, or dietary limitations.
The first step is to get a diagnosis. If you’re feeling weaker or more sluggish than usual, it’s worth visiting a doctor to get a blood test.
Your doctor will request a full blood count, possibly combined with iron and ferritin tests. Low haemoglobin, ferritin, and serum iron levels, and high transferrin levels, can all indicate an iron deficiency.
If your iron levels are low, you may need to take iron supplements — but only do so under your doctor’s guidance to avoid flooding your body with too much iron (this can cause its own problems!).
Most doctors will also recommend a diet rich in iron, which may include eating more meat, poultry, and seafood.
According to a 2020 review by Nils Thorm Milman, a Danish senior consultant of Internal Medicine, certain proteins and nutrients can also block iron absorption in the body. These include the proteins in eggs and soya beans and calcium-rich foods like dairy.
If you’d like to prevent hair loss from anaemia, you can also make sure you eat nutrient-rich foods that are good for hair health, such as nuts and seeds, sweet potatoes, and avocados.
Anaemia and hair loss require monitoring. Your doctor will likely recommend regular blood tests to check your iron levels and adjust treatment as needed.
Best Haircare Practices for Hair Impacted by Anaemia
Any anaemia hair loss treatment requires serious medical supervision but you can do some things to protect the hair you have and nurture any regrowth.
Anaemic hair can be weak and brittle, so the best haircare routine is about being gentle, preventing further damage, and nourishing your scalp to encourage regrowth.
With that in mind, here are a few gentle haircare tips:
- Use a mild, natural shampoo free from moisture-sucking sulphates.
- Steer clear of heat styling tools and let your hair dry naturally.
- Stay away from harsh chemical treatments like colouring and bleaching.
- Indulge in regular scalp massages — it helps increase blood flow to the scalp!
- Combine scalp massages with hair-loving herbal ointments like lavender or rosemary oil.
- Embrace silk in pillowcases and scrunchies to reduce friction points.
- Make like Rapunzel and let your hair down! Avoid tight hairdos that can strain your hair follicles.
- Avoid brushing wet hair and replace the brush with a wide-toothed comb.
Alongside a gentle haircare routine, you may also like to explore proven hair regrowth treatments. Minoxidil, for example, is a vasodilator, which means that it helps increase blood flow to the scalp.
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Anaemia Hair Loss Recovery: How Long Does It Take?
How long it takes to recover from anaemia hair loss depends on how quickly you identify and treat anaemia. Even after your iron levels return to normal, it will still take on average 3–6 months to see the impact on your hair.
You can thank the hair growth cycle for that.
It takes time for your hair follicles to transition back to an active period of growth — and more time again before you can actually see the regrowth.
The best you can do is to be patient, monitor your iron levels, and stick to the anaemia hair loss treatment plan your doctor recommended.
When to See a Doctor?
Whenever the amount of hair you’re shedding seems out of the ordinary and concerns you, you should consider consulting a doctor — particularly if your hair loss coincides with other symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, dizziness, or pale skin.
A doctor can arrange blood tests to check for an iron deficiency. And if you’re anaemic, they can recommend a treatment plan to restore iron levels.
An underlying health condition, like a thyroid disorder or an autoimmune disease, may also contribute to anaemia. That’s why we always recommend speaking to a doctor if your hair loss is excessive or persistent, even after improving your nutritional needs.
FAQs
1. Can anaemia cause patchy hair loss, or is it always diffuse thinning?
When it comes to anaemia-related hair loss, the pattern is almost always diffuse rather than hair falling out in clumps. It’s a pretty important distinction because it can help you differentiate anaemia hair loss from other conditions.
With iron deficiency anaemia hair loss, you might experience:
- Increased shedding throughout your head, not concentrated in specific areas
- Hair becoming generally thinner and less dense overall
- Strands falling out while brushing or washing
Clumpy or patchy hair loss (where hair falls out in distinct areas, leaving bald spots) is typically associated with other conditions like:
- Alopecia areata (an autoimmune condition)
- Trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder)
- Certain fungal infections
- Traction alopecia (caused by tight hairstyles or chemical damage)
It’s best to consult a doctor if you’re concerned about any hair-raising changes, whether that’s increased thinning all over or hair falling out in clumps.
2. How can I tell if my hair loss is caused by anaemia or another health condition?
The only way to know for sure that your hair loss is caused by anaemia and not another health condition is to consult a doctor who can run blood tests for iron deficiency.
Unlike male pattern baldness with its receding hairline or balding crown, or female pattern hair loss, which often starts with a widening part, hair loss caused by anaemia doesn’t follow any particular pattern.
It’s typically diffuse, meaning you experience increased hair shedding and general thinning all over your scalp.
But other types of hair loss caused by nutrient deficiencies — not to mention other health conditions like hypothyroidism hair loss — can also appear as diffuse thinning. So the best way to identify iron deficiency hair loss is through a blood test.
3. Can increasing protein intake also help with anaemia-related hair regrowth?
Hair is made up of protein (a particular protein called keratin). So the amount of protein you eat naturally affects your hair. The right amount of protein supports hair growth while a lack of protein can contribute to hair loss.
As Professor Ralph Trüeb from the Swiss Center for Dermatology and Hair Diseases said, ‘the protein component of [the] diet is critical for the production of normal healthy hair’.
But that doesn’t mean that eating more protein will help you grow more hair if you don’t have a protein deficiency in the first place.
According to The Trichological Society, hair grows on average 0.5–1.7 cm per month. There’s not much you can do to change that — this growth rate is encoded in your genes and dictated by your hair growth cycle.
Learn more about how vitamins and minerals are essential for healthy hair growth.
4. Does stress play a role in worsening anaemia hair loss?
Overall, studies suggest that stress can affect your iron levels. But the jury’s still out on how big an impact it can have on anaemia, and whether it would worsen hair loss from anaemia.
In 2019, an Australian clinical psychologist and researcher, Doctor Adrian Lopresti, comprehensively reviewed the scientific evidence on the effects of stress on micronutrients in the body — including iron.
He found that in animal studies, results consistently suggest that exposure to stress can change iron concentrations in the bodies of rats and mice.
The research on humans was less clear cut but some interesting studies suggest stress may contribute to iron deficiency — which may worsen iron deficiency anaemia hair loss.
One particular study of mothers and newborn infants found that mothers who reported experiencing stress during pregnancy had lower levels of iron in their umbilical cord blood at birth.
Another study on Navy SEAL trainees found that iron concentrations decreased by 44% after 5 days of physical and psychological stress (but ferritin concentrations increased by 59%).
5. Can frequent dieting or fasting contribute to anaemia and hair shedding?
Most humans get the iron our bodies need from the foods we eat. If we’re not eating enough iron-rich foods (or enough food altogether), we could end up iron-deficient or anaemic.
Learn more about malnutrition and hair loss.
Several studies point to evidence that fasting or rigorous diets like keto can lead to anaemia.
Take this 2013 study by Professor Rafal W. Wojciak. Professor Wojciak tested the serum and bloods of 46 healthy women who fasted for one or two days every 8 days, for 48 days in total.
His results showed that two days of fasting significantly decreased iron, ferritin, and haemoglobin levels in the serum and hair. Another more recent study was a 2023 study of 185 female university students. The research found that women who followed weight loss diet programs had significantly higher rates of anaemia and iron deficiency.
