sade087

Greetings blog-readers! The blog has been quiet because while I have ideas for blog posts, they generally take more hours to carry out than I have to write them.  This is not intended as medical advice and does not replace a consultation with a doctor. Use any and all treatments at your own discretion - or ask your doctor or pharmacist. Nor does it replace buying half a dozen dandruff shampoos and handing them off to a family member or friend when they don't work for you. Alas. I buy these products myself - this is not a sponsored post. Everything you see here should cost less than $25. I have an entire page dedicated to itchy, flaky, bumpy scalp products because so many of us encounter those problems from time to time, or on a more or less constant basis. What kind of scalp problem do I have?  My skin falls into the " atopic dermatitis/eczema " category. Also " seborrheic dermatitis ." I don't see those things as separate entities, there is overlap, even ...

Greetings! The blog has been very quiet lately. Life gets busy, busy, busy. I keep reading how many people experience problems with oils. Some people's hair never met an oil it didn't like. And for others, their hair has a problem with all but 1 or 2 oils. Occasionally we try an oil and get such a bad result, we want to swear off all oils. But then you're probably missing out on some beneficial, inexpensive effects. Here's my quick assessment checklist for whether your hair gets along with an oil or not. Don't worry that somebody else's hair does really well with an oil that makes yours look and feel awful. We're all as different as we are the same. Skin and hair chemistry vary subtly from person to person. Good oils for your hair: A good oil for your hair will look and feel good when you apply it - maybe adding a little sheen, a smoother feel, ease of detangling. And it will still have that sheen and smoothness hours later. You may need to re-apply the oil...

UV protectants are ideal for active people, for going to the beach where sand and water amplify UV radiation, and especially helpful for gray hair which tends to discolor (usually turning yellowish) in sunlight. Any hair benefits from UV protection because direct sunlight increases hair's porosity. Sunlight tends to make your hair's cuticles shrink and fuse together - like "shrinky dinks" or similar to what happens to hard plastic placed in a hot oven. That means tiny pores are opened up where the cuticle used to cover the hair. This takes only 200 hours in the sun - half an hour a day for just over a year. Brown to black hair tends to fade both lighter and reddish in the sun and blonde hair and red hair lose color. Highlighted hair tends to become "brassy" and gray/white hair can turn yellowish as well. One may not blog about summer and sunshine without invoking a beach scene. Here you go. The Ingredients: These are all UV light absorbers - the word "p...

Updated: May 2018. It's the unofficial start of summer this weekend in the Northern Hemisphere. For a lot of us, that means humid weather and frizzy hair - whether the dewpoint is high (above 50°F/10°C) or it's foggy, dewy or rainy. Raindrops on a Monarda leaf. In the last decade or so, the creative folks who make cosmetics ingredients have developed ingredients that withstand high humidity better than some of the older ingredients for providing "hold." They are slowly working their way into products in a variety of brands. These ingredients are polymers - film-forming, even hold-providing. The performance of the product as a whole is the sum of its parts - so you do want to look for these ingredients if you really need to keep your hair together in high humidity - but keep in mind that just because they're in a product doesn't mean the product will suit your hair or your hairstyle. What is humidity-resistance?  It means a product is less likely to lose it...

Please remember that this information can and should never replace the care and advice of a physician. If you experience hair thinning, seek consultation with a medical professional who listens and will physically examine your scalp. If you take medications on a regular basis, always check for interactions between medications and supplements. Be aware that scalps can be sensitive to any and all treatments and products, including natural ones. Scalps that are losing hair may be more sensitive than scalps in which hair density is stable. This post has lots of links. Where I can link you to a full article, I did. Otherwise, I linked to abstracts, which contain a summary of the study's contents. Updated: September, 2018 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Androgenic alopecia is the clinical term of male and female pattern hair loss. It’s one of those diagnoses of exclusion. If you don’t have telogen effluvium (hair loss following an exposure t...

This is essentially a recycled and updated post from 2011. Recycling is good, right!? Build-up from hair products is usually 2 things: - Oily residues like actual oils and butters, creamy ingredients like Cetyl alcohol and other emollient ingredients. - Cationic ingredients that bond to the hair. When they're good, they're very good and when there is too much, you feel "build-up." Here I’m referring to 2 classes of chemicals: Quaternary cationic surfactants and cationic polymers. First off, cationic means something has a net positive charge (+). Hair has a net negative charge at the pH environment in which it usually exists (somewhere between pH 4.5 and 5 is average). Opposites attract (positive and negative) when it comes to hair and conditioner. More-damaged hair (the ends, heat-styled, sun-damaged, chemically relaxed, permed, highlighted) has more negative bonds and will bond with or "adsorb" more cationic ingredients. But it also loses them more quickl...

If you're not already aware of it, and I assume you are if you're reading this, some people avoid silicone-based ingredients in hair care products for various reasons. Some people get a slick, fake-hair feeling in their hair, or a heavy, limp feeling. Silicone build-up's feel (if your hair gets any at all) depends on which silicone you've been using. If you don't use shampoo - you wash your hair with conditioner for example - your hair is more likely to accumulate silicones because you are not washing them off with detergent between applications. If you used them very rarely though - would it matter? Don't avoid silicones if they don't cause problems for you. For real. Silicones are reversible. They wash out. You'd think they were permanent, based on some of the bad press they get. They can even be removed with non-detergent ingredients if you dare not let a single bubble near your hair (blog post about that is coming up soon). "Silicones" refe...