As you are on your journey to maintaining healthy hair, you must not forget how important it is to care for your scalp. Your scalp is the foundation of healthy hair growth. A healthy scalp has normal shedding of cells from the surface as new cells form. When this process gets interrupted by the environment and/or unhealthy hair practices, this is normally the causes of scalp issues such as dandruff and dryness.
Below are 5 tips to help keep your scalp healthy, nourished, and stimulated.
1. Avoid product build up
You must not get product happy and pile on too many products all the time to achieve various hairstyles. Keep it simple when it comes to your hair care regimen. Too much oils, heavy creams, and greases can cause your follicles to clog up and prevent your scalp from getting the adequate moisture it needs to stimulate hair growth.
In response to this build up, the scalp reacts by stopping the production of its natural sebum (oil) causing excessive dryness.
2. Water your roots
Do not stray away from water when it comes to your hair and scalp. Proper hydration inside and out is what helps keep our cells in our body functioning properly. This goes for the scalp as well. In between washes, it is a good practice to spritz your hair and scalp with water before applying styling products.
Also, a great tip for when wearing braids, is to spritz water in between the braids on the scalp and top with a light oil to relieve the itchy scalp. Due to the parts in the style, the scalp is in constant contact with the harsh environmental conditions (ie. the sun, pollen, etc) causing dryness. Applying water will help hydrate and remove some debris from the scalp until wash day.
3. Refrain from stripping shampoos
Proper cleansing of the scalp is important to its health. You want to use sulfate free moisturizing shampoos for weekly cleansing and leave the clarifying shampoos for once a month treatments.
When working out and heavily sweating, remove drying salt deposits on the scalp by rinsing your hair with cold water. For the summertime when you are enjoying the cool waters of the swimming pool, make sure you remove the chlorine from your hair with a chelating shampoo and then deep condition.
4. Keep “direct” heat away from the scalp
Do not use extreme temperatures when using heat styling tools such as blow dryers, hooded dryers, and flat irons. When using these tools, direct the heat away from the scalp and down the hair shaft to create proper air direction flow. Too much heat on the scalp can cause issues such as flaking due to parched skin cells.
5. Watch what you eat
Ok and again, healthy hair and scalp starts with a healthy body. Medications can destroy the health balance of your scalp. So try to eat properly to keep your immune system strong enough to fight off viruses and diseases.
Do not rely on supplemental vitamins alone to give your body the nutrients it needs to function properly. We can’t stress enough to drink plenty of water and eat the foods that has the vitamins naturally to stimulate a healthy body and hair.
