If you planted a sapling for your birthday, you water it every day, give all the necessary nutrients, but the plant grows to be unhealthy.
Its leaves look dull and it appears to be stooping constantly, no matter what you do. Until you realize that the soil was too compacted.
What do you do next? You remove the excess soil and give the sapling some space and air. Well, your hair is nothing short of a sapling that needs to be nurtured.
You can give your hair all the love and care, but if it is not growing in the right environment, it will not be healthy and the perfect environment for your hair entails the scalp.
What scalp exfoliation entails
The scalp is nothing but part of your skin that covers your head. So why not exfoliate it like the rest of your skin? Scalp exfoliation is removing the dead skin cells, excess skin cells, oil, dandruff, dirt, etc, in order for fresh skin and healthier hair to grow. So in order to get shinier and healthier hair, it becomes necessary to remove the dirt, excess oils and skin build-up.
Should you exfoliate?
Yes, absolutely! Be it your nosy aunties who comment on your hair or your jealous friends; be sure to tell them why you should:
- Enhancement: Whichever hair treatment you might be undergoing, calp exfoliation will always supplement the benefits
- Promotion: You sure can be doubtful of your next promotion, but can rest assured of hair growth promotion.
- Cleansing: The process not only cleans up your scalp of the skin cells but any other stuck up hair products that may not just go after shampooing. It also cleans up your hair of the same.
- Prevention: Exfoliating ensures a non-greasy, non-flaky and dandruff-free scalp, as it also keeps the oil on your scalp under control, thus preventing itching.
What you need for exfoliation
You can doff of the excess debris in two possible ways – physically and chemically, depending upon what works on your hair and the amount of time and patience you possess, of course ideally after a consultation with your dermatologist. To physically exfoliate the scalp there exist a number of tools and manual techniques which help to remove the dross while ensuring to be gentle with your scalp. Physical exfoliants would be accompanied by some sort of manual action like that of massaging, combing, etc. Examples of physical exfoliants would be sea salt, beads, charcoal, etc.
Chemical exfoliants are tricksters as they come with the risk of toppling the ph balance of your scalp. Chemical or synthetic exfoliants usually utilise mellow acids to remove the buildup, so you would have to sit with it for a while after its application. If you must have a scrub, choose one that is less abrasive and contains ingredients like AHAs or BHAs. They cause natural self-exfoliation by causing the scalp skin to self-renew. I recommend doing one once a week at the most. Be gentle and avoid rubbing hair strands because too much friction can damage them.
