If You Are Experiencing Hair Loss, It May Not Be Your Shampoo
If you are experiencing hair loss, you may have gone through this cycle:
Changing shampoos
Switching to silicone-free, amino-acid-based, or “anti-hair-loss” products
Controlling washing frequency
Carefully massaging your scalp
Constantly questioning: “Am I doing something wrong?”
Yet the hair keeps falling out. You may try even more intensive care, but the more you try, the more anxious you feel, and hair loss still doesn’t truly stop.
If you are in this stage, pause for a moment. A more important and often overlooked fact is: most of the time, the root cause of hair loss is not on the scalp, but in the overall energy supply of your body. For context, see our Nutritional Deficiency Hair Loss hub.
1. Why Do We Always Suspect “Shampooing” First?
Because shampooing is the only part you feel you can control. You can see it, touch it, and immediately make changes.
In comparison:
Whether you are eating enough
Whether energy supply has been insufficient over time
Whether your body is under stress
These factors are vague, abstract, and hard to judge. Naturally, the brain chooses a visible problem to explain a visible result. Unfortunately, hair growth is never determined by one local factor. For a deeper explanation, see What Is Nutrient Deficiency–Related Hair Loss?.
2. Does Hair Care Really Do Nothing? Not at All
Let’s be clear: hair care is important, but it solves environmental problems, not nutrient or energy supply problems.
Hair care can:
Maintain scalp cleanliness
Reduce irritation and inflammation
Protect existing hair from additional damage
But it cannot:
Provide the energy needed for growth
Determine the growth priority of follicles
Make the body “exceptionally grow hair” when resources are limited
If hair growth is like a factory, hair care is cleaning the facility and maintaining equipment, while energy is the electricity and fuel.
3. What Does “Overall Energy Deficiency” Mean?
Here, “energy” is not just the number of calories. It refers to whether, after meeting survival, work, and stress demands, your body still has the capacity to support long-term, non-essential growth projects.
Many people experiencing hair loss aren’t eating extremely little. They are in a long-term state such as:
Eating moderately but with high energy expenditure (Mechanism 1)
High stress without corresponding increased intake
Busy, anxious, or poor sleep
Subconscious resistance to “eating a bit more”
In this case, the body makes a very realistic judgment: “Now is not the right time for growth.”
4. Why Is Hair the First to Be Reduced?
From the body’s perspective:
Hair does not affect whether you survive today
Continuous growth consumes a lot of energy
Stopping growth has almost no short-term cost
So the body quietly does one thing: reduces resource allocation to hair follicles. It doesn’t cause sudden baldness, but:
Growth phase shortens
Proportion of resting phase increases
New growth slows
Hair strands become thinner and softer
These changes are often mistaken as poor hair quality or insufficient care.
5. Why Does Being Extra Careful Sometimes Increase Anxiety?
Because you are putting too much effort into a problem that hair care alone cannot fix.
When the root cause is energy deficiency:
Gentle washing cannot change the growth permission
Expensive serums cannot truly activate follicles (Evavitae Root Fortifying Hair Essence)
Yet you keep watching, analyzing every fallen hair, which increases anxiety. Anxiety itself consumes more energy, forming a typical cycle:
Hair loss → Over-focusing → Anxiety → Higher energy consumption → Continued hair loss
6. How to Tell If Your Hair Loss Is Related to “Overall Energy Deficiency”
Ask yourself in the past six months:
Have you been in a prolonged “tight” or stressed state?
Do you rarely eat in a truly relaxed way?
Do you feel guilty or uneasy about eating more?
When stress, workload, or exercise increases, do you fail to adjust intake accordingly?
If you resonate with these, hair loss may not be about shampooing. It is your body signaling: current resource conditions are not suitable for growth. For a broader view, see Nutritional Deficiency Hair Loss Mechanisms.
7. This Doesn’t Negate Hair Care — It Puts It in the Right Place
When we say “hair loss isn’t caused by washing incorrectly,” it doesn’t mean neglecting scalp care.
It means:
Hair care is for basic maintenance
Energy supply grants system permission
Only when the system allows growth does hair care fully realize its value.
Final Note
If you are experiencing hair loss, remember: hair doesn’t fall out because you are not trying hard enough. It is your body prioritizing stable function. When energy supply becomes stable and reliable, hair follicles will naturally return to higher priority.
The next article will continue to explore: even when energy gradually recovers, why inadequate protein still causes new growth to stall (Mechanism 2).
