Taking a bath every day is sometimes a tall order, let alone washing your hair all the time. It’s better if you have a shower because rinsing hair from the tub requires effort- a perfect excuse to skip a few hair washes. While overwashing your hair is a thing, not regularly doing so is also a problem. You need to know your hair type and what’s good for it. We found that working out a simple weekly regimen could help you stay away from dermatologists and other health experts – something we never think about when we go for days without a wash or when the shampoo runs out and we don’t bother looking for more.
Keeping your hair clean and your scalp well moisturised is a good habit; you could avoid medical conditions like the three below.
- Seborrheic dermatitis
Many of us tend to ignore flakes of skin that come off the scalp when we brush or comb our hair until it becomes an embarrassing bout. Dandruff, or mild seborrheic dermatitis, as the experts call it, is a condition that causes the skin to flake – even in eyebrows, beard or moustache. A daily wash can moisturise the skin and get rid of the flakes. Invest in a good shampoo and conditioner like Pantene or Sukin, both currently available on special from Coles online.
However, if the flakes do not go away quickly, it may be a deeper skin condition like eczema or psoriasis. You may need a medicated shampoo and other creams as advised by your doctor. The bottom line is, keep a good wash-day routine so that you can readily identify issues.
- Folliculitis
Sweat that is not washed off can lead to your tresses being drowned in sebaceous (lard-like) secretion which when mixed with those flakes we spoke about, eventually lead to an infection, mainly on the hair follicles. Known as Folliculitis, this condition causes your hair follicles to be inflamed. If you skip too many washes, you may end up with crusty sores on your scalp. It doesn’t end there; once those sores appear, your hair will start falling off, and you might end up with permanent hair loss and scars on your head.
- Cicatricial Alopecia
Hair loss or alopecia, is caused by various things, but closely tied to folliculitis, cicatricial alopecia is a result of inflamed hair follicles that get replaced by scars, and hair fails to grow back. As mentioned before, letting sweat soak up in your hair for a long time without shampooing it may lead to secretions oozing and causing an infection to hair follicles. You may not notice your hair falling out at first, as the process may be slow. But, some people do experience large clumps coming off at once. It will take a professional skin doctor to determine the exact type of cicatricial alopecia you get, but why let things get that far in the first place?
There are many more infections and diseases you can get from not taking proper care of your maine. We hope we have given you a bit of insight to what could happen if you continuously ignore wash-day or fail to use the right shampoo and conditioner.
