Reader Questions : Dandruff

Kadiane says, 'Jojoba is not an oil. It is a wax so the fungus can not change it into oleic acid.'

Actually the distinction between and oil and a wax relates to its temperature/physical properties. Jojoba oil is a liquid wax as you say correctly but it contains oleic acid as do many other natural oils (Journal of the American Oil Chemists, pg 239-244, 1996). However, if your method is working for you and you have no problems, there is no reason to change it!

Kadiane asks 'I never put a rinse out conditioner after a shampoo.........i believe it will not completely rinse out and that will mean a moisturized scalp which fungus love. do you think i'm over doing it for the rinse out?'

Yes I think you are overdoing it :). You are right to say that you probably cannot rinse out all the conditioner but you can rinse out most of it. I think unless a doctor has recommended that you don't use conditioner, I would say it is fine to use and do spend five minutes properly rinsing it out.

Anon asks 'Does bentonite clay pull toxins from the hair and skin?'

Bentonite clay is not widely researched for use on hair and skin. It is researched in the wine industry where it is known to adsorb proteins, fats and oils (meaning the proteins in the wine stick to the clay). I would therefore expect that with hair or skin, bentonite clay works by effectively 'moping up' grease or other particles in a solution. It is used for colon cleansing too where I would think it would work by adsorption. I have not heard of the clay pulling toxins from the hair or skin.

Alice asks 'Did your paper say have far there were decoding it (the dandruff fungus genome)? That's so cool'

Yes , the genome actually has been decoded (PNAS, vol. 104 no. 47 18730-18735 , 2007. ).

Finally a very important word of advice from Urban Sista - 'Flakes don't always equal dandruff or a medical condition. I found that my flakes were due to a coconut allergy. Who knew coconut was in 99% of shampoos?'

Comments

  1. Thank you so much JC. I'm glad you brought the oleic acid to my attention ( Jojoba). I've been doing this for a while and i do not remember very well but i think at the time i also took into consideration that Jojoba oil did not have much of the fats that the fungus could eat (lol) to add to the oleic acid.
    You made me rethink my routine and i decided to replace the jojoba-tee trea oil by the heavy petroleum based zinc pyrithione product and use it every other week on top of the weekly shampoo. i was avoiding the petroleum cuz it will slow hair growth sitting on the scalp for a whole week but i realized that doing it every week in the middle of the week for it to last 3 days comes to the same as doing it every other week for the whole week . The advantage is i do not have to struggle to get it on my scalp while my hair is already styled in the middle of the week. Lately the jojoba-tee trea was dripping on me cuz my hair has grown and with the new possibilities in styling, it is hard to get to the scalp and i had to pore a lot on the scalp hence the dripping. i will try to see i can mix tee trea with petroleum or mineral oil (homemade). petroleum dandruff products have triclosan in some of them. That is supposed to be bad .

    To sump it up i now have a bi-weekly routine and not more dripping due to over oiling cuz of hair style. Bottom line, you've been very helpfull and feel free to bust my new routine lol.

    By the way i'm francophone. i hope you understand me still :)

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  2. Oh! for the conditioner, i'm too afraid to try it now but i will eventually. I'll let you know.

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  3. Mais bien sur - Your English is much better than my French :)

    I think if your routine works for you then it is a great routine. If it stops working then you need to change it.

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