A little off topic - but one of my most frequently asked questions...
My Hair Journey: What Seven Years, a No-Shampoo Phase, A Baby in my 40's, Stress and Perimenopause Taught Me About Actually Fixing Your Hair
Even though I am definitely not a “beauty influencer” (and don't want to be 😂) - I have been asked about my hair products more than almost anything else over the seven-plus years I have been online.
And for a long time my answer was complicated, because the honest answer involved admitting that I went down a lot of roads that didn’t work before I found something that did.
So this is that full story. The no-shampoo years (yes I went 2 full years with no shampoo), what happened after multiple pregnancy losses & the birth of my son, the texture nightmare, the products that made it worse, the drugstore surrender, my daughter’s health crisis, perimenopause, my thyroid, the hair loss that followed all of it, and finally what actually turned things around.
Before we dive in...I will share my brand new water filter guide in this email (will be charging for this in the future - but sharing with you for free today - thank you for being on my list).
Before I get into what happened & worked for me I want to say something clearly: Hair loss is not one thing: It can be thyroid, it can be hormones, it can be iron or ferritin tanked from years of undereating, it can be stress-driven cortisol disrupting your hair growth cycle, it can be postpartum, it can be autoimmune, it can be a medication side effect, it can be blood sugar, it can be genetics, it can be several of these at once which is what it was for me.
What I share here is my story and my results. I am not promising it will be yours because I don't know what's driving your hair loss. If you don't know either, that's actually the most important place to start before trying any products at all!
The No-Shampoo Years
For about two years I didn’t use shampoo at all, because I was trying to get pregnant - and got rid of all my “toxic” personal care products (including makeup - lotion - etc).
If you’re in the wellness world you’ve probably heard of the no-poo method. The premise is that conventional shampoo strips your scalp of its natural oils, which triggers your scalp to overproduce oil to compensate, which makes you need to wash more frequently, which strips more oil, and so on in a cycle that’s serving the product industry more than it’s serving your hair. The solution, in theory, is to break the cycle entirely - stop washing with shampoo, and let your scalp regulate itself.
For me it actually worked really well. There’s a transition period of a few weeks where your hair looks and feels awful (very greasy) while your scalp recalibrates, and that part is not fun. But once I got through it my scalp settled, my hair felt healthy, and I actually didn’t need to wash it with shampoo. I was converted!
And then I had my son.
Postpartum: When Everything Changed
After my son was born my hair just... changed. The texture shifted in a way I hadn’t anticipated. It wasn’t dramatic postpartum shedding (luckily), it was more like my hair became a completely different material overnight. My hair was drier, more fragile, and more prone to breaking off at the ends. The no-poo method that had worked so beautifully suddenly didn’t work at all. My hair needed something, and the no poo method wasn’t cutting it anymore.
What I want to be clear about is that this wasn’t a serious hair loss situation yet, it was a texture and breakage issue, and it was relentless. I tried everything in the clean beauty space. Brand after brand of natural, non-toxic, carefully formulated shampoos and conditioners, the kind I would have felt great about recommending. Most of them made things worse. My hair got drier, and the breakage got worse. I was spending money on products with ingredient lists I felt good about and watching my hair deteriorate every single month.
I also couldn’t grow my hair past a certain length - which was brand new for me also.
Eventually I gave up on the clean stuff and went back to a conventional drugstore shampoo and conditioner, because it was the only thing that wasn’t actively damaging my hair. I wasn’t happy about it but functioning hair won out over a perfect ingredient list, and I felt completely out of options.
I also only wash my hair once a week & don’t use a ton of “product” - so I felt that it wasn’t a huge “exposure” in the grand scheme of thing (especially since I am already super careful about my diet - air quality - water quality , sauna 3 times a week, sunlight & I really don’t wear makeup (click here for my full product guide).
Me in 2023 right before I switched back to drugstore shampoo (texture had changed a ton).
2024: The Drugstore Era Was Actually... Fine
Here’s the part of the story I don’t think people expect me to say. By 2024, as my daughter was recovering from a serious illness (click here to read more on that and her health crisis) and life was stabilizing, my hair actually looked pretty good.
I share this because I think it’s important to be honest that sometimes the “clean” version doesn’t win (and the amount of women who have large followings in the holistic space who have also admitted this to me is astounding).
Sometimes your hair just needs what it needs and the ingredient list is a secondary concern when the alternative is breakage and dryness. I had made peace with it. My hair was in a decent place and I was focused on bigger things (and continuing my other habits that made me feel OK about using less than perfect shampoo).
And then 2025 happened (keep reading).
(Me and my son in spring of 2024)
2025: When It All Caught Up With Me
I don’t think I fully understood how much had been stacking up until my body started showing me.
The years of caregiving for my daughter through her serious illness. My mom aging and needing more from me (she is an amputee & needs a lot of extra help). Multiple public appearances and launches and the kind of sustained performance pressure that looks fine from the outside but costs something real on the inside - It all compounded, and one of the places it landed loudest was my hair.
I started noticing a lot more hair on the shower floor & not the normal amount of shedding that’s easy to rationalize, enough hair that made me pause every time. For anyone who has experienced significant hair loss you know that specific kind of dread. You start washing your hair less frequently just to avoid seeing it.
This is what chronic stress does to the body and it is deeply underappreciated. Prolonged elevated cortisol disrupts the hair growth cycle directly, pushing more follicles into the telogen (shedding) phase prematurely.
My thyroid, which had already taken hits from years of stress, was also struggling. Thyroid hormones are critical to hair follicle function and when they’re off even subclinically the hair is often one of the first places you see it. And being in my mid 40’s - perimenopause was accelerating the whole picture, with the hormonal shifts of that transition making hair follicles more sensitive and the growth phase shorter.
Everything was hitting at once. And the drugstore shampoo that had been holding things together was no longer enough.
Me in July of 2025 - Definitely not what anyone would call “thinning hair” - but it was noticeable for me & losing so much hair every time I showered was really bothering me!
The OneSkin Serum: A Starting Point
Last summer I started using the OneSkin hair serum. Within the few months I did start to see new growth coming in and I was genuinely excited! It was the first thing that had actually moved the needle on regrowth and I was hopeful.
The serum helped with growth but it didn’t solve the shedding side of the equation, and I was still losing noticeable amounts of hair every time I washed. New hair was growing in but old hair was still falling out at a rate that didn’t feel right, so the net result was slower than I truly wanted.
A product can work and still not be the complete answer. So for me - this was a good starting point, not the finish line.
What Finally Changed Everything
My dear friend Dr. Tyna Moore called me in December 2025, and started raving about how much she had seen hair hair change from using some new products (of course I was skeptical, because I had heard a lot a smack talking online about this company - but I had nothing to lose at that point).
(I will talk more about the online smack talking & rumors later on….)
I am not being dramatic when I say this was meaningful (and exciting) to me after years of watching clumps of hair fall out every single wash. The loss stopped. And the hair that’s there, the hair that has been growing back over the past year, is thick and clean and strong and healthy in a way I had genuinely forgotten my hair could feel.
I want to address the ingredient question directly because I know it matters to this community. MONAT is not a brand I would have expected to end up recommending (and used to RUN the other way when I was approached by sales people).
I was very skeptical (but I also deeply trust Dr. Tyna as a personal friend).
They have an MLM side to their business which made me even more skiddish initially, but the formulations are sulfate-free, paraben-free, free of mineral oil and petrolatum. Are they “perfect”? No - but a huge huge step up from the drug store brand I was using.
They also outperformed every clean brand I had tried while also actually working, which is the combination I had been looking for for years.
And importantly, there is now a straight retail store where you can buy with no membership, no signup, no commitment, and no recruitment involved whatsoever. Just products.
(Also let’s be serious - I truly don’t have time to be bothered by an “upline” or build a “downline” - and I just want to get the goods and be on my way!)
My Daughter’s Results
The same products that worked for me worked for my daughter, which is its own kind of validation. She has very sensitive skin and had reacted to every clean brand I tried on her with hives.
She also went through a period where her hair simply wasn’t growing well, which we connected to thyroid issues that followed her illness. Since switching, zero hive reactions, hair that doesn’t get greasy after one day (which was her major issue before - very very greasy hair no matter what) and her hair is actively growing again after a long period where it wasn’t. Watching both of us get results since December is a big part of why I feel confident enough to share this publicly.
I only cut my hair twice a year so the split end treatment is genuinely non-negotiable for me.
Everything is available in my retail store, linked here, with zero obligation. International friends, email info@sarahkleinerwellness.com and I will get you a country-specific link.
I also created an FAQ doc about the company - ingredients - concerns about online gossip - and more. Click here to download
The Bigger Picture & More on Root Causes
I share this full story because I think women in the wellness space are often sold a narrative that if you just use the right natural products everything will work. And sometimes that’s true. But sometimes your hair is falling out because your thyroid is struggling under the weight of prolonged stress. Sometimes the texture is changing because you just grew a human and your hormones are doing something entirely new.
Sometimes it’s because perimenopause and the hormonal landscape of your forties & beyond is genuinely different territory from your thirties.
If you are dealing with significant hair loss the question worth sitting with isn’t just what shampoo to switch to, it’s what is your body trying to tell you about what’s happening underneath.
For me the answer involved stress, thyroid, hormones, and time. The right products made a real difference once I was also addressing those root causes.
And that looked like: actually eating enough carbs, minerals, potassium rich foods & learning to say NO more often.
Dealing with the root cause through nutrition - stress management & lifestyle changes is the first step - and finding the products that work best for you also matters. It’s not just one thing!
