What can the ends of your shed hairs tell you?

[ericgerard]

Hey guys. I wanted to ask you what you think the ends of your shed hairs might be able to tell you about how your treatments are working. Most of the hairs I shed are thinner and less pigmented towards the root (as in Case 1 below), with the length of taper being quite short. Less than half a centimeter usually. However.. I do shed a few hairs that are notably thinner at the tip with a gradual increase in thickness and pigment towards the root! They are however in the minority. I also found a few really long hairs today that showed basically no taper throughout the shaft length. I'll post pics of each case.

Case 1. Shorter hair (3-4 cm) that is thicker at the TIP and thinner/less pigmented at the root. The length of this thinning is about 4mm.


Case 2. The same hair as above, except this time I clipped off the 4mm that is thinner. You can see that the ends are now the same thickness and pigmentation. The 4mm I clipped off represents about 12 days of growth. There's no way a hair could succumb to miniaturization in 12 days.. could it? Maybe this is normally how hair bulbs look?


Case 3. Shorter hair (3-4 cm) that is thicker at the ROOT and notably thinner at the tip! Could this be good news? A reversal of miniaturization perhaps?


Case 4. Longer hair (8-9cm) that is pretty well the same thickness throughout. If this is 9cm long hair, it has been growing for about 9 months by my math. I started fin 9 months ago. Perhaps this means the hair has been maintained!


So what do you guys make of this? What do your hair ends look like, and how is your treatment going?