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Why is oiling your scalp bad for Seborrheic Dermatitis? That's the question I'm going
to answer for you today. I get this question periodically in my Twitter. Occasionally,
I get a private message. Today's question comes from Sharsopretty, which is an excellent
question. She says, Hi Quote, happy to see that you're back and doing well. I wrote
you a few months ago about SD & Locs, but I found some older videos where you pretty
much answered my questions.'
Any who, I started my Locs in January 2012. Congratulations! Welcome to Locdom. I took
your advice on not getting salicylic acid shampoo to control my SD. I also have a prescription
oil, that I use like the P&S, oil you suggested. I've been using this oil for over a year
now and it works. I was wondering, 'Why did you say that oiling your scalp is one
of worst things you can do?' It is an excellent question and it really gets to heart of two
misunderstandings.
A misunderstanding of what P&S liquid or other oil based sloughing treatments do for Seborrheic
Dermatitis and a misunderstanding of what the actual causes of Serborrheic Dermatitis
are. There are two things that pretty much all the dermatologist can agree on. What causes
these two things is what all the dermatologists are disagreeing on. The two things are, Seborrheic
Dermatitis is a combination of over production of oil and over production of yeast.
Essentially, what's happening is you have too much oil production going on and the yeast
is feeding on that oil and the yeast poops out all kinds of horrible enzymes that cause
our skin to flake and slough and make a mess and that's dandruff, essentially. Now, what
causes those two things are up for debate. Seborrheic Dermatitis can be aggravated by
everything from stress to diet, to sickness, to auto-immune disorders, to gluten intolerance,
like you name it.
Pretty much anything that has any sort of auto-immune or inflammatory response in the
body can aggravate Seborrheic Dermatitis. A lot of people get relief by getting tested
for celiac decease or distressing their diet and distressing their life, doing meditation,
those types of things. When it comes to the actual symptoms, if you're having an outbreak,
why do I say, 'Don't oil your scalp?' Well honestly, I say, 'Don't oil your
scalp across the board.
When you look at the percentages of people who have actual dry scalp, it's a very tiny
small amount of people that have a genetic propensity for dry scalp. Everybody else produces
plenty of oil on their own. Adding oil to your scalp causes a host of issues. Now, we've
been told by people, that we need to oil our scalps, because our hair is so dry and if
we oil our scalps, our hair will grow faster. It's all load of baloney, okay.
Up until here, I'm going to show you one of my locs. From here to here, I produce plenty
of oil on my own. I produce natural sebum and it will travel about one to two inches.
After that, I do need to oil my locs, but that's because my hair is *** and the
oil can't travel down the loc. It's not because I'm not producing enough oil to
get down the loc. What happens to all that excess oil? It is sitting on your scalp.
What happens when you go and you get a nice jar of Blue Magic and you start putting some
Africa's best and some Miracle Africa Witch Doctor Hair Growth crap on your scalp? You
have your natural sebum which is already probably a little too much on your scalp, because it
can't get down on your hair shaft anyway. Then, you put all those oil on top of that.
So, h ow is your scalp going to breathe? How is your scalp going to absorb nutrients? When
you wash your hair and your hair is dry and your scalp is still oily, because there's
so much on it, that if you actually get your scalp clean, your hair is overly dry that's
a problem. I say, 'Don't oil your scalp' unless absolutely necessary. If you're going
to oil your scalp use something that's very close to our natural oil.
That's why I love Jojoba oil. A natural Jojoba oil is as close to natural sebum as
we can get. It's a natural wax ester. When you look at it under a microscope, it looks
so close to what our natural sebum is. As a matter of fact, it looks so close to that.
If you do have excess oil and you need to remove it, putting some Jojoba oil on your
scalp the night before you take a shower, actually help to dissolve it.
Think about it like, okay, you have on makeup. It's like grease based make-up and you tried
to wash it off. You know, its grease based. It's oil based water proof make-up. You
try to wash it off with water and it's still on your face. Then, you get some Jojoba oil
or some olive one, you rub it on your face and suddenly your make-up comes off. It's
the same thing on your scalp.
You got all those oil on your scalp. You put a little bit of that Jojoba oil on your scalp.
Let it sit overnight, wash your scalp, bam, all the excess oil is gone, because it dissolved
it. Now, that's kind of what P&S liquid is doing.
The P&S liquid is not an oil that you put on your scalp and leave on your scalp. This
is not what you- you're not oiling your scalp. What you're doing is you're giving
your scalp essentially an acid treatment.
The P&S liquid and most of the prescriptions that are similar to it, most of them have
an oil based, lots of them, is a mineral oil based, mineral oil, while horrible for lots
and lots of things. For some reason, it actually does have beneficial effects to Seborrheic
Dermatitis. No one has been able to tell me why in a convincing way. I talked to three
dermatologists, they all say, 'Well, it works.' Well, works isn't an answering
my question.
Most of them have some sort of mineral oil and then it has an acid in it. So what you're
doing is you are doing this treatment over night and when you wash it out the next day,
you've removed several layers of skin and scales. What that does? Is it makes, so that
when you use your medicine, when you use your cell salicylic acid shampoos, your coal tart
shampoos, when you put on your hydrocortisone or whatever, it's actually going to get
in to the skin, because Seborrheic Dermatitis can get really build up.
Last time, I shaved my head. I was having a really, really bad Seborrheic Dermatitis
outbreak. I shaved my head, because I could not get this outbreak to stop. I had flakes,
this was not flakes, these were sheets, I took tweezers and lifted off sheets of scalp,
that's like this big, it's kind of nasty. That's how bad my Seborrheic Dermatitis
was. Now, the reason why I hadn't been able to get that under control is because I hadn't
been able to get rid of that.
I was putting medicine on top of it. I was putting shampoo on top of it and none of it
was penetrating my scalp. So the P&S liquid and the treatment oils that you get from your
dermatologists, those you're using not to oil your scalp, you're using as a carrier
for medication and to help dissolve the flakes, so that you can wash them away. If you continue
to oil your scalp, you'll actually make it worst.
Why does it make it worst? Because, the fungus that is part of the cause of Seborrheic Dermatitis,
it's all over our bodies naturally. It's all over everybody. For some reason people
with eczema, people with Seborrheic Dermatitis, parts of our body produce more oil than other
parts of our body. That fungus loves that oil, it's like 'Yum, yum, yum, let's
go eat it.' So, you get an over production of these yeast.
If you combine that with ph-balance with your ph being imbalance from shampoos and conditioners,
relaxers, products, things on your scalp, if you combine that with irritating products,
anything that causes any sort of inflammation in the skin, if you combine that with bad
diet, lack of vitamin A, lack of sunshine, lack of vitamin D. Guess what? You're going
to have a Seborrheic Dermatitis outbreak, that's going to be so hard to get it control
of, you're going to fight with it for the rest of your life.
Unfortunately, part of this is genetic. So, if you're prone to Seborrheic Dermatitis,
you're always going to have to take really good care of yourself to keep it from getting
really bad. Where somebody that's not prone to Seborrheic Dermatitis can abuse their scalp
to their heart's content and they may have inflammation, but it may not show as Seborrheic
Dermatitis. Since, we're prone to it, we've got it. We need to take a really good care
of our scalps. Oiling your scalp is a sure way to make it worst.
Using a P&S liquid or another type of sloughing lotion treatment is not oiling the scalp,
that is a treatment, that you're doing at most once a week, most likely, you're doing
it once a month. You only need to do it enough that the scalp, that the flakes are controled,
that when you put your medicine on your hair when you're shampooing your hair, that it
can actually get in there and do what it needs to do.
So, that is my advice on that. Like I said, none dermatologist, not a loctician, but go
out there and do your research. This is one of the few situations where I'm going to
say, 'If you don't want to go and read the Gazillions Scholarly Journal Articles,
go look at the Wiki page for Seborrheic Dermatitis, it's actually really good. I don't know
who all's have been contributing to that page, but it's one of the pages on Wikipedia that
is extremely accurate and well notated and well done. So, hope that helps. Ciao!