How To Moisturize Your Scalp For Stronger Hair
Beautiful, vibrant hair begins in the scalp. But when your scalp is dry, itchy, or flaky, it can be challenging to maintain healthy hair, not to mention embarrassing. Hormones, poor diet, product buildup, reduced sebum oil, and aging are some underlying conditions that can cause a dry scalp.
Your follicles are the tiny organs that manufacture your hair, and their health is contingent on how well-nourished and conditioned your scalp is. The skin on your scalp is as vital to care for as the skin on your face. Eating healthy foods, supplementing with collagen, moisturizing with butter masks, and exfoliating with activated charcoal are crucial ways to hydrate your scalp and promote thicker, stronger hair.
Your Scalp Anatomy
Becoming familiar with your scalp is crucial to growing vibrant hair. Your scalp is where your hair forms and grows, and if properly maintained, will give your follicles an optimal biome to turn thick, lush hair year after year.
Your scalp comprises five layers of tissue; the first three are tightly connected and move as one structure. "SCALP" is a useful mnemonic to help remember the five scalp layers:
- Skin — This outer scalp layer is the only one that is skin. Scalp skin contains your sebaceous glands and nearly 100,000 follicles from which your hair grows. It is some of the thickest skin in your body and carries more blood than other places.
- Connective tissue — This dense fat and fibrous tissue lies beneath the skin and is loaded with the scalp's nerves and blood vessels.
- Aponeurosis — The aponeurosis (or epicranial aponeurosis) is a fibrous, tendon-like tissue connecting muscles in the front and back of your head.
- Loose areolar connective tissue — One of the most common tissue types in the body, areolar connective tissue, is made up of type I collagen and type III collagen bundles, elastin, and other matter. It also contains numerous blood vessels.
- Periosteum — The periosteum is a fibrous sheath that covers all of our bones. The pericranium is the skull's periosteum, providing nourishment and giving your skull bones the ability to repair themselves.
Replenish Your Body's Collagen Levels
The scalp's skin layer is slightly different from other skin in that it is made up of the epidermis and dermis and has a massive concentration of terminal hair follicles. The dermis supports each of our hair roots and is made of 70% collagen.
As we age, our bodies become less efficient at making collagen and replenishing dermis cells. Since collagen contributes to the dermis's strength and elasticity, it may be one reason why our scalps are dryer, and our hair grows thinner over time.
Beyond intrinsic aging, extrinsic aging caused by sun, smoking, and other environmental damage can accelerate collagen deterioration in your scalp in the same way it does in your face and other parts of your body. Scalp skin becomes thinner because the elastin and collagen layers disconnect.
Because hair grows from your skin, taking collagen supplements like Better Not Younger's Skin and Scalp Collagen Gummies may contribute to improved hair health and scalp hydration.
According to an eight-week collagen supplementation study, 69 women, ages 35-55, found that collagen supplements taken every day enhanced skin elasticity significantly in older women and positively influenced skin moisture levels.
Moisturize Your Scalp
It is vital to keep your body hydrated from within to alleviate scalp dryness. Water is saved in your deeper skin layers and slowly moves up through the layers to provide moisture to your stratum corneum, the crucial uppermost layer of your scalp's skin. Once it reaches the surface, the water evaporates into the environment, eventually leaving your skin feeling dry and itchy.
Our bodies supply little moisture to our upper skin layers when we are dehydrated. When this happens, external moisturizing products like Better Not Younger's Hair Redemption Restorative Butter Masque can help.
This rich and creamy restorative masque is loaded with antioxidants, vitamin E, and five natural plant butters: Macadamia, Avocado, Cupuaçu, Murumuru, and Mango. Mango butter (Mangifera indica) includes a mixture of essential fatty acids that help balance your scalp's sebum production.
Used once or twice a week in place of conditioner, Hair Redemption hydrates your scalp and repairs your dull, brittle, troublesome tresses.
Use a Scalp-Targeting Treatment
Sebum is natural oil produced by your scalp's sebaceous glands. Its primary function is to nourish your skin and provide a barrier preventing moisture loss from within. It is made up of fatty lipids that include wax esters, glycerides, cholesterol, and squalene.
Genetics, aging, hormones, dietary deficiencies, and prescription medications can all play a large part in rising and falling sebum levels over time. Some women produce less sebum, which is a strong reason for chronic scalp dryness. For others, too much sebum is produced, or it may be self-inflicted. The health of your scalp-skin layers, and subcutaneous tissues, directly correspond with good nutrition and quality hair care products.
Applying heavy oils, pomades, polymers, and other low-quality products directly to your scalp can cause buildup, clogging your pores. Dried sebum and dead skin cells can also contribute to blocked pores. When it all combines, an obstruction can form near the follicle entrance.
In some instances, this obstruction causes dryness, inflammation, and hair follicle shrinkage., undermining hair development, prompting brittle, wispy strand growth. Like the skin anywhere else on our bodies, our scalp needs to breathe.
To properly exfoliate your scalp and stimulate your follicles, use Better Not Younger's New Dawn Activated Charcoal Scalp Cleanser. Created to be an exfoliating facial for your scalp New Dawn is a vital component of scalp health maintenance — the basis for a lustrous, thick mane.
Lactic acid is an alpha hydroxy acid that gently removes dead cells from your stratum corneum (the top skin layer) and breaks down buildup surrounding clogged pores. Activated charcoal absorbs excess dirt and oils. And birch extract clarifies and nourishes your skin with a non-drying astringent and A, B, and C vitamins.
Use BNY Products to Hydrate Your Scalp and Create Thriving Hair
To produce flourishing, radiant hair, ensure your scalp stays clean, pliant, pH-balanced, and stimulated. An adequately hydrated scalp increases blood circulation, improving oxygen and nutrient delivery to your follicles.
Drink plenty of water, eat a vitamin- and fiber-rich diet, and use Better Not Younger's hair care products specially formulated for your aging hair and scalp.
Visit our Shop page for more quality solutions to help you keep your scalp healthy and hydrated.