Umm….Say What Now? WEN Cleansing Conditioner Causing People’s Hair to Fall Out

Did you guys hear about this shenanigans? My first reaction was utter shock, for some reason even though I never purchased not one bottle of this stuff I held the line in the highest regard.

Then my second reaction was, how? What in the world could they have in that stuff that could cause massive clumps of peoples hair to fall out; While at the same “curing all scalp issues” according to the infomercial?

Of course I had to get to the bottom of this, what could Chaz Dean have done? And does he know that I actually recommended his product to my mother?

According to word on the street, there is a class action lawsuit that has been filed in California in the Summer of last year. The suit is against Guthy-Renker who is the parent company of WEN.

According to the details of the suit the WEN Cleansing Conditioner specifically causes hair loss and if you are smart enough to stop using it, your hair continues to fall until there is literally nothing left.

That might be a bit dramatized but I promise you its only a ‘bit’. The suit was filed but Amy Friedman who happens to be a medical nurse practitioner from Florida.

She was sold like many of us by the WEN infomercial and took the plunge purchasing the conditioner. According to the details:

“Within two weeks of beginning use of her WEN Cleansing Conditioner, [she] began losing substantial and abnormal amounts of hair [and] the hair loss continued for approximately three more weeks [and she] lost one quarter to one third of the hair on her head.”

Amy is suing the company for her hair loss. When you add the emotional toll this must have had on her, it could be a pretty hefty bill for the “all natural” product company.

In addition to the loss of her hair, Amy had to spend a pretty penny on supplements* and hair weaves* to cover up her quite obvious bald spots and she wants to recoup that cash as well.

Ok, so I get it: one person had a bad experience; it could be just a faulty batch and maybe she was just a tad unlucky, so the sensible thing would be to check around to see if she was the only one with the problem.

I Googled it myself, “Does WEN cause your hair to fall out?” – The first thing that popped up was that same question posted on the QVC website by one of many users:

I got WEN last month when it was a TSV and have been using it since I got it. My hair looks really nice when I use it. But when I’m in the shower and combing through my hair, I have been noticing clumps falling out. Then I noticed my hair in the front is really thin. I am young and I have a ton of hair, so that’s not normal for my hair to fall out. My hair does look really good when I use it though. Well, for the past couple days I have been using my usual Aveda shampoo and conditioner and hardly any hair comes out. Do others experience this too and what could be the cause of the fallout? Thanks.

What?!!

Wait there’s more, another commenter posted the following:

Shortly after I first started using Wen last summer, I had a TON of hair loss. I ran out to replensish my supply of rogaine*, and started using that again. I stuck with Wen, and in a short time, my hair stopped falling out, so I also cut way back on the Rogaine* (maybe once a week now, if I remember).
What I found is that while I had a lot of hair loss at first, now I have almost no loss at all….. That is, almost nothing in the shower, and much less to clean up from my bathroom floor each day than before Wen.

And recently, when my fine, thin hair got long enough to put in a ponytail, I realized that it filled the band much better than ever before. In the past, the band would fall off if I wrapped it three times. Now, there is enough hair to make it stay put …. it’s not even a little bit loose! (still wrap it three times, though.)
While we are all different, I think the Wen just helped me shed what needed to be shed. My best advice would be to watch this carefully. It might be that you can’t use this product, or, like me, it might be that you just have to get rid of the old to make way for the new and better.

I am still stuck on the part where she said “WEN just helped me to shed what I needed to shed” – funny that wasn’t anywhere on the label.

Wouldn’t it be better for the company to say”Hey girls, we will help you shed the hair that needs to be shed, but don’t worry, you never needed all that hair anyway”.

Man, listen, I do not need any help with shedding, and since we are all educated around here we are very aware that shedding is determined by one or both of two things.

One natural biological processes within our body or two, something that is too harsh that is applied topically to our scalp causing excessive hair fall. With WEN it seems obvious that we should go with option 2 just based on the complaints along. The issue is… what could be in the product that caused hair loss that was not declared on the ingredient list?

Amy is specifically charging WEN with violating California false advertising law, violating Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act and negligence and failure to warn.

The lawsuit also claimed that Guthy-Renker had knowledge of a material design effect:

[Guthy-Renker did not ] disclose and/or warn plaintiff and other consumers that Wen Cleansing Conditioner can and does cause substantial hair loss [and that] Guthy-Renker concealed customers’ comments concerning hair loss, by blocking and/or erasing such comments from the WEN Facebook page.”

The “bad” news is I still have no idea what could be in the product that causes hair fall, and from just a quick search it seems this mystery has yet to be explained.

I agree with people who have talked about this issue, you should probably keep shampoo around in your regimen just in case there is something on your scalp that needs to be stripped away.

Other than that, we just have to be very aware. If we notice hair loss after using any product, the best rule of thumb is to just stop using it!

We will see how this suit pans out; in the meantime, I will NOT be purchasing WEN.