Treating Dandruff

[mrhealthie]

Introduction

Dandruff is a very common form of scalp irritation. It is actually a disease in itself, says Dr. Warwick Carter in his book The Complete Family Medical Guide, but most people describe a scalp that is shedding copious quantities of skin scale as dandruff.

Dandruff is characterized by accelerated cell turnover — in other words, the cells on the surface of your skin build up like crazy.

“Typically, it takes 21 days for new cells to migrate to the surface of your scalp, where they are shed, says Dr. Yohini Appa, director of product efficacy at the Neutrogena Corporation. “Ideally, it’s an invisible process. But with dandruff, the cell reaches the surface in half the time.” As a result, cells build up on your scalp in clumps before they’re shed. And when they shed, they look like tiny white flakes.

Below are some treatments and remedies to control if not cure dandruff:

Dandruff Shampoos

Choose an anti-dandruff shampoo that contains coal tar, salicylic acid, pyrithione zinc, sulfur or selenium sulfide, says Dr. Patricia Farris Walters.
Dandruff Treatment

Each ingredient reduces dandruff in a different way. The tar-based shampoos slow cell production, while salicylic acid-based shampoos slough off dead cells before they clump. And both shampoos have anti-fungal properties and help fight invading yeast microbes, which is one of dandruff’s most persistent triggers. Pyrithione zinc and selenium sulfide reduce cell turnover, while sulfur is believed to cause slight skin irritation — just enough to lead to the shedding of flakes.

Some shampoos on the market contain more than one ingredient, says Dr. Walters. Trial and error is the only way to sort out which one will work for you.

When you wash your hair, lather once, rinse, lather a second time and really rub your scalp as you shampoo. Let the shampoo sit on your head for at least five minutes, and rinse well.

Naturopathy

Self-help: Yogurt is recommended as a hair conditioner. Wash and rinse the hair, then rub yogurt into the scalp, and leave for 10-15 minutes. Rinse, then wash again, using as little shampoo as necessary. An infusion of thyme, nettle or sage with 2 tablespoons of vinegar can be used as a final rinse. (To make an infusion, fresh or dried herbs can be used in loose or tea-bag form. Warm a teapot and put in 1 dessertspoon of herb for each cup required. Pour in a cup of boiling water for each cup of tea; allow to steep for 10-15 minutes.)

Consultation: A practitioner will tell you that dandruff may indicate poisons in the system or nutritional deficiencies and imbalances in levels of minerals and/or trace elements. He will recommend a diet of plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and wheat germ, vegetable oils and high-protein food, such as lean meat and nuts. To be avoided are: sugar and starch products, alcohol, and fatty or highly spiced foods.

Homeopathy

There are a number of specific homeopathic remedies available to treat dandruff, and many of them are very effective. Experimentation with the following remedies may provide the solution, or seek a homeopath’s advice: Arsenicum, sepia, sulfur, mezereum, fluoric ac., graphites, oleander and nartrum mur.

Herbal Medicine

A South African herbal treatment for dandruff is a paste made by mixing borax with an infusion in boiling water of the fresh roots of the wild scabious (or ‘pincushion’), a common veld flower in midsummer. Rub the paste into the scalp once a week. For a scalp massage after shampooing, use infusions of rosemary or lavender.

Aromatherapy

Mix essential oils of cedarwood (seven drops) cypress and juniper (each ten drops) in 50ml of carrier oil. Rub well into the scalp and leave for one hour. To remove, rub neat, mild shampoo into the hair, then wash out with warm water.

To keep dandruff at bay, use the same quantities of the oils in 600ml of warm water. Stir well and use as a final rinse.

Kinesiology

A kinesiologist may suggest tea tree oil, hair and scalp care, selenium shampoo and vitamin A to be taken orally.

[mrhealthie]

You may have noticed palm oil in the news recently.

Confectionery giant Cadbury bowed to pressure in New Zealand -- including a boycott of their products at the Auckland Zoo -- and reverted to the recipe of their Dairy Milk bar that contains cocoa butter instead of palm oil. Last week LUSH Cosmetics announced that they will no longer use palm oil because of environmental concerns.

Why all the hubbub? For those of you unfamiliar with The Palm Oil Problem, let me share the basics.

First, palm oil is in everything. Food, cosmetics, cleaning supplies. If you see any of these familiar looking names on the list of ingredients, it's really palm oil (visit this site for a more complete list):

* Palmate
* Palm Oil Kernal
* Palmitate
* Glyceryl Stearate
* Stearic Acid
* Steareth -2
* Steareth -20
* Sodium Lauryl Sulphate
* Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate (coconut and/or palm)
* Hydrated palm glycerides
* Cetyl palmitate and octyl palmitate (and anything with palmitate at the end)

Palm oil is also in demand as a feedstock for bio-fuel, if it's grown in a sustainable manner, because it's a relatively high yield crop.

Here's why it's a problem. Of the ocean of palm oil it takes to fill the supermarkets of the world, about 80% is produced in a small corner of Southeast Asia: Indonesia and Malaysia, in a decidedly non-sustainable manner.

Where there were once acres of rainforest and peatland sheltering endangered species like the Sumatran and Borneo orangutans, Sumatran Tiger, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, and the Asian elephant, there are now geometric squares filled with rows of palm oil trees.

Besides eliminating the habitats of these endangered creatures, replacing rainforests and peatland also releases huge quantities of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change.

Sure, in theory palm oil could be produced in a sustainable manner. There is even a group called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which is supported by WWF. But the bottom line is that the demand for palm oil still exceeds the efforts to produce it in a sustainable way.

So what to do?

* Support companies like LUSH who put their money where their mouth is and remove palm oil from their products.
* Support the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Center in Borneo, which cares for orangutans orphaned by deforestation
* If you have to buy something with palm oil in it, look for a product that carries certification that it was sustainably produced.

[D.Irving79]

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[Kouros]

Jeris hair tonic controls dandruff well.

[BoldSpice]

What does palm oil have to do with dandruff? Are you copying and pasting in stuff from the web just to get your post count up?

[kingfisher]

Looks like Spam to me.


But most "dandruff" is actually seborrheic dermatitis, and seborreic dermatitis is a superficial fungal infection. If you have bad dandruff, a physician can give you a prescription for Ketoconazole shampoo (Nizoral), or you can try it at non-prescription strength over-the-counter. Selenium sulfide (as in Sesun Blue, among other products) works because it kills the fungus.

[mmack66]

What does palm oil have to do with dandruff? Are you copying and pasting in stuff from the web just to get your post count up?

Maybe he thought this was Wikipedia?

[bwatts]

I was diagnosed with mild scalp psoriasis in January from personal experience yoghurt, vinegar, tea tree or listerine did nothing for me. Best thing to buy is Ketoconazole shampoo. The shampoo works wonders for me when I do get the occasional flare-up Betacap stops that dead

[Trendkill]

I used to have bad dandruff until I started using Matrix Biolage Anti-Dandruff shampoo. This is the only stuff that works for me. It's expensive but worth it in my opinion.

[Ashkii21]

Selenium sulfide (as in Sesun Blue, among other products) works because it kills the fungus.

I use the Head & Shoulders w/ Selenium Sulfide and that works for me. I only use it 2x a week and I use just a regular shampoo and conditioner for the other 5 days. It also is cheaper than Selsun Blue.

[ShaveAddict]

Best anti-dandruff :
Take 3 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar,
Massage your head and hair whit it for about a minute,
Let the vinegar work in your hairs for about 30-45 minutes,
And wash your hair whit a good shampoo after
For the beginning when you what to get totally rid off the dandruff use a shampoo like Head and Shoulder
When the dandruff will be gone in about a week u can start rotating on regular and anti-dandruff shampoo.
But for the vinegar part of the regimen , do it every day.
It worked for me and i had a bad dandruff problem.

[dwnwrdishvnwrd]

What does palm oil have to do with dandruff? Are you copying and pasting in stuff from the web just to get your post count up?

Copy and paste from here for the dandruff info and there were multiple places that palm oil info could have been copied from.