Hairstyling Tip of the Day: Secrets to a Healthy Scalp!

If there is one hair secret that I have learned throughout my years as a stylist and will never forget, it’s this one. Cosmetology school was where I first learned the importance of clarifying your hair in order to maintain the “homeostasis” of your strands, but it wasn’t until a year or two ago where I learned that clarifying shampoo doesn’t clarify your scalp! Just like we use tons of products to keep the pores on our face clean — we need to do the same for our hair follicles! Hair follicles can become just as clogged, if not more clogged, than our pores! Clogged hair follicles can wreak havoc on the overall health of our hair leading to weakened strands, ingrown hairs, and believe it or not, slowed hair growth!.After all, our scalp is the foundation for hair growth. Clarifying our scalp is not only easy to do, it’s one of the most affordable things you can do to completely change the condition of your hair!

So… How do you do it? Pick up a basic facial astringent from any local drugstore or beauty supply shop (most of the time — you can get away with spending less than $4.00!) and grab some cotton balls. Before your next shampoo simply soak your cotton balls in your astringent. Apply it all over your scalp by making several parts! By the time you’re finished applying, you can hop right in the shower and shampoo as usual! Continue this once a week and you will surely notice the difference in scalp health!

Helpful hint: When shopping for an astringent for your face OR scalp, be sure to try to pick up one that does not contain Ethyl or Isopropyl alcohol – these are short chained alcohols that can act as solvents. We want to preserve as much of those natural hair oils as possible, to do this look for long chained fatty  alcohols such as Cetyl or Stearyl alcohol these will hydrate your hair instead of stripping some of those essential oils that we want to hold on to. If you can’t find an astringent with these alcohols, no biggie! As long as you aren’t using it daily it won’t do much harm!

Here’s to healthy and happy scalps!