When struggling with hair loss, along with taking care of your hair itself, it’s important to start at the root—your scalp plays an important role in preventing excessive hair loss and encouraging continuous hair growth.
A healthy scalp environment plays a key role in creating a healthy hair regrowth environment. Putting your scalp in harm’s way can be detrimental, and eventually lead to worsening or excessive hair shedding, thinning, and loss.
What Are Some Ways to Address Having a Healthy Scalp Environment?
Keeping up with washing is one of the biggest ways to maintain a healthy scalp environment. Without proper hair and scalp hygiene, dandruff and other debris such as scalp oils, dirt, and product residues can build up on the scalp. Creating and maintaining a healthy, clean scalp is to keep excessive build-up at bay. Leftover debris, product, and surface oil can trap bacteria, creating a bad odor and making hair appear greasy and limp.
Knowing scalp hygiene is an important factor in encouraging healthy hair growth, GetHairMD™ introduced a 3-piece hair care product line specially designed to help promote a healthy environment for your scalp.
The Replenish Shampoo adds fullness to thin, lifeless hair by expanding the shaft of the individual hair follicles, leaving the hair with a healthy body, volume, and shine. Next, the Restorative Conditioning Treatment provides nourishment; its rich formulation reinforces follicle roots to prevent breakage, and helps promote fullness and body in thinning hair. Lastly, the Rapid Growth Serum is a rejuvenating complex designed to address temporary hair thinning caused by various common causes of hair loss.
The GetHairMD™ hair care product line has been dermatologist tested, has never been tested on animals, contains all naturally-derived ingredients, and is completely paraben, sulfate, and phthalate free. Read more about our hair care line here.
Scalp massaging is also a well-known method to promote a healthy scalp environment, as massaging stimulates blood circulation and encourages detoxification. Organic olive oil, organic shea butter, and organic sunflower seed oil are some good at-home products that can be used for massaging the scalp. The GetHairMD™ Rapid Growth Serum is also a great product you can use for scalp massaging that comes with added hair regrowth benefits.
Daily physical activity, like regular exercise, may prevent some forms of hair loss, as it improves blood flow to your scalp. Finally, eating nutrient-rich foods with zinc, omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E may encourage an optimal hair regrowth environment as well.
What Can Cause an Unhealthy Scalp Environment?
Topping the list of factors contributing to an unhealthy scalp environment is harmful chemicals often found in hair care products. The major chemicals in question are sulfates, parabens, and phthalates.
Sulfates, often used in shampoo to increase its lathering effect, are very drying to your hair and scalp. They are often at fault for stripping away too much of your hair’s natural oils. Over time, using products with sulfates will weaken your hair follicles, causing your hair to look dull, or become very prone to damage, breakage, and split ends. While parabens are used as a preservative in hair products, they can be very damaging to your hair. Parabens can irritate your scalp, fade the color of your hair, and even cause hair loss. Lastly, while phthalates are found in our everyday products, they are damaging to put into your hair. They are often used as gelling agents in lower-quality shampoos and conditioners, and can lead to scalp irritation and inflammation.
Long exposure to the sun can be another issue when it comes to promoting an optimal hair regrowth environment. Dr. Wilma Bergfield says,
“If your hair [and scalp have] prolonged exposure to the sun, UVA and UVB rays can damage the outside cover of the hair strand, called the cuticle. Sun damage can come in the forms of discoloration, dry and brittle strands, thinning, and frizziness.”
Your hair is more vulnerable to sun damage if it is fine or light-colored. Finer and lighter hair lacks the thickness or pigment that can protect it from the sun’s rays. Hair is also more fragile and more prone to sun damage if you have thin, flat, or tightly coiled hair.
Stress is another factor that can negatively affect your hair regrowth environment. The three types of hair loss that are associated with high levels of stress according to the Mayo Clinic are:
- Telogen Effluvium; significant stress pushes large numbers of hair follicles into a resting phase.
- Trichotillomania; an irresistible urge to pull out hair from your scalp, eyebrows, or other areas of your body. Hair pulling is associated with stress, tension, and loneliness.
- Alopecia Areata; With alopecia areata, the body’s immune system under stress attacks the hair follicles. This immune attack of the hair follicles is what causes hair loss.
Getting your stress under control is very important when it comes to encouraging an optimal scalp and hair regrowth environment. To address excess stress, HEC recently began offering Corganic’s clinical-grade CBD product line as an add-on to GetHairMD™ hair regrowth programs.
Finally, smoking is not only bad for your lungs, but it negatively affects your scalp health too. One of the lesser-known side effects of smoking is an increased chance of developing hair loss. As one example, smoking can lead to nicotine buildup in your hair follicles, which may lead to impaired hair growth. Smoking also slows down circulation, which in turn reduces blood flow to the scalp.
In Conclusion
There are many factors that can help or harm your overall scalp health.
While hair loss can be spurred on for reasons beyond your control, maintaining a healthy scalp environment is a tangible way for you to positively affect your hair loss situation on a daily basis. For all your other hair loss concerns, GetHairMD™ is ready to join you on your hair regrowth journey.