Want to know what causes a dry, itchy, flaky scalp and how to treat it?
If you’re reading this because you’ve been scratching your head about how to treat a dry, itchy, flaky scalp perhaps the first thing to know is, you’re not alone: lots of people suffer from scalp conditions. A frustrating problem, it’s not just the physical itching and redness that’s irritating; psychologically, unsightly flakes can make you feel self-conscious and impact your confidence, but the condition can also affect the quality of your hair growth.
The good news is, with the right treatment, you can get on top of it but before we move onto how to help fix those flakes and relieve that itchy redness let’s first look at how the scalp works and what triggers poor scalp health.
Understanding your scalp
Home to your hair follicles, it’s no surprise that by caring for your scalp you are also safeguarding the future strength and growth of healthy hair. The skin on our head has sweat glands and sebaceous glands that produce sebum, which forms a protective barrier for the scalp and moisturises the hair. Like the rest of the body, our scalp hosts a whole universe of microflora which rely on sebum and sweat as their food source.
On a healthy scalp where the follicles are clean and clear, skin renewal takes place over a four-week period with small numbers of dead skin cells shedding as tiny individual scales that we don’t normally notice. These dead cells slough away on the outermost layers of the skin, the stratum corneum as it’s known which is a shield against external aggressors, bacteria, physical damage and water loss.
There are, however, various factors which compromise the skin’s barrier function and rapidly accelerate the rate of skin shedding from a regular 28 days to 14 days which in turn leads to problem dryness, itching, flaking and follicles that are compromised by a build-up of dead skin cells.
What are the causes of a dry, itchy, flaky scalp?
Identifying the exact reason for the problem can be tricky but one of these factors is often to blame:
Microbiome imbalance
While an itchy, flaky scalp doesn’t always mean dandruff, it is a very common skin condition that affects about 50% of the world’s adult population and it occurs when the balance of the scalp’s microbiome is disturbed. Micro-organisms called Malassezia live on everyone’s scalp. They thrive on the nutrients in the natural sebum that’s released there but if their numbers increase and get out of control, skin cells start to overproduce and build up too quickly. This leads to the rapid shedding of big clusters of dead skins cells and the formation of visible flakes accompanied by itchiness and irritation.
Read Complete Article at ameliorate.com
Also read: How To Get Rid of Keloids? : Causes and Treatments
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