"My hair won't grow past my shoulders" is almost never a growth problem. It is a breakage problem, and the two look identical in the plughole until you actually look.

Here is the test. Pick up one of the hairs that came out and find the end that was attached to your head. If there is a small pale bulb on it — a tiny white or translucent knob — that hair was shed. It completed its cycle and let go at the root, which is normal and happens to everyone, roughly fifty to a hundred a day. If there is no bulb and the end is just a blunt or frayed break, that hair snapped somewhere along its length. That is breakage.

The distinction matters because they have completely different answers. Shedding at the root is follicular — hormones, iron, stress, thyroid, a medication, a rough few months. No topical product touches that, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something. It is a GP-and-bloods conversation.

Breakage is a fibre problem, and a fibre problem is the one you can fix. Hair snaps where the cuticle has been stripped and the shaft has gone brittle — usually the last few inches, which are the oldest and have been through the most bleach, heat and friction. Length is not something you grow so much as something you manage to keep.

If most of your hairs have no bulb, stop worrying about growth. You are growing fine. You are losing it at the ends faster than you are gaining it at the root, and that is a far more tractable problem.