Your hair has been trying to recover. Here’s what’s been stopping it.

A note from Roseline Davies, licensed cosmetologist — 25 years in practice. Written for people who are tired of being told “it’s just hormones” with no follow-up.

You’ve done the research. You’ve tried things. You’ve been patient. And your hair still isn’t where it was. That’s not a discipline problem — most explanations of hair loss stop at “hormones” and leave it there. That’s not wrong. It’s just incomplete enough to keep you stuck.

So let’s actually go through it, the way I’d explain it to a client in my chair.

Anagen: the phase almost all your hair is in right now — and the one that gets cut short

Anagen is the active growth phase — the hair follicle is dividing rapidly, pushing out new hair shaft, for anywhere from two to seven years. At any given time, roughly 88–90% of your hair is in anagen. That’s the phase you want hair staying in longer.

Then comes catagen, a short, roughly two-week transition where the follicle detaches from its blood supply and starts to regress. Then telogen, the resting phase — about two to three months where the hair sits dormant, doing nothing, attached but not growing. And finally exogen, the actual shedding phase, when that resting hair releases — usually while you’re washing or brushing, which is exactly why the shower drain became the place you started noticing something was wrong.

A whole list of things can push hair out of anagen and into telogen early — inflammation, hormonal shifts, stress, nutritional deficiency, poor sleep. When that happens to enough follicles at once, you get diffuse shedding. That’s the mechanism. Not “getting older.”

Estrogen, androgens, and why miniaturization is real but isn’t the whole story

Estrogen drops during menopause, and your follicles become measurably more sensitive to androgens they used to be shielded from. That sensitivity is what shrinks the follicle over successive cycles — a process called miniaturization. It’s real, it’s well-documented, and it’s one input into the system.

It’s not the only one. That’s where most explanations stop short.

The blood flow piece nobody puts in writing

Every hair follicle needs a blood supply to function — oxygen and nutrients arrive through the capillaries feeding the dermal papilla, the small cluster of cells at the base of the follicle that essentially runs the whole growth program. Reduced blood flow to that area means reduced delivery to a structure that’s trying to divide rapidly during anagen.

There’s actual research on this, and it’s more interesting than “massage feels nice.” A study on standardized scalp massage found it increased hair density specifically in men with androgenetic alopecia. The mechanism proposed is mechanical — the stretching force on the dermal papilla cells appears to switch on the genes associated with the growth phase and switch off the ones associated with regression.

This is part of why this is formulated as an oil you massage into the scalp, not a serum you dab and walk away from. The application itself is doing mechanical work, separate from what’s in the bottle.

Ferritin: worth checking before you assume nothing is working

Here’s the one that’s been getting real attention lately: ferritin, your stored iron level. Iron is a cofactor your body needs for the enzymes involved in rapidly dividing cells — and hair matrix cells, during anagen, are some of the fastest-dividing cells you have.

Why the scalp gets the same logic skincare took a decade to figure out

Scalp care is having a real moment — with the same logic skincare went through a decade ago being applied to the scalp: barrier function, microbiome balance, calming inflammation, rather than just “put oil on it and hope.”

That’s not a trend we’re chasing after the fact — it’s the actual logic behind formulating with multiple oils instead of one. Lighter, fast-absorbing oils for the surface and barrier. A lauric-acid-rich Batana oil base to work into the hair shaft itself. Rosemary oil — the one ingredient in this blend that’s been tested head-to-head against minoxidil in a clinical trial — for the follicle-level mechanism specifically.

None of this is a substitute for a real medical workup if something more serious is going on. What it is: a formula built around the actual mechanisms — the phase your hair is in, the blood flow reaching it, the inflammation it’s dealing with — instead of a single ingredient and a hopeful label.