What a hair loss breakthrough could mean for women like me

I was kneeling over a bath, washing it in a hotel room one Saturday evening, getting ready for my friend's 40th birthday celebration. Seventeen days earlier, I'd had the first of six chemotherapy sessions to treat my breast cancer, but days had gone by with no hair loss.

But as I held the shower over my head, suddenly the stream of water turned dark, as long strands of brown hair began coalescing around the plug hole in front of my eyes. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"Oh wow," I said to myself, because I honestly hadn't expected it.

During chemotherapy, I had been wearing a cold cap – the freezing helmet designed to help preserve hair during treatment. I was told it didn't work for everyone.

It may sound dramatic, but for me, losing my hair was worse even than losing a breast through a mastectomy. Why? Because without my hair, I wasn't me. I had no idea until I started losing it that my hair was part of my identity.

Now, scientists in Japan believe they may be a step closer to changing the reality of hair loss for millions of people.

In what researchers are calling a "major breakthrough", a team, led by Prof Takashi Tsuji, say they have managed to recreate the full cycle of hair growth in mice - meaning hair could grow, fall out and grow back again naturally. While transplanted hair can already grow, recreating follicles that can behave like the natural hair inside the body - repeatedly growing, shedding and regrowing over time - has proved far more difficult.

For women living with hair loss - whether through cancer treatment, alopecia or ageing - breakthroughs like this hint at something once thought impossible: that hair loss can be reversed.