Having beautiful and healthy hair requires basic and fundamental care, which is sometimes overlooked. Because a hair routine goes far beyond using good specific products or not overdoing it with heat tools. One of the parts in which we tend to fail a lot and that is more important in hair health than we think, is washing.
Pharmacist Helena Rodero has a lot to say about this topic, as she has spoken at length about the importance of washing your hair. The expert who was invited to Dr. Borja Bandera's podcast clarified very interesting topics regarding hair and placed a lot of emphasis on the topic of hair hygiene.
The problem is not in washing your hair every day, but in not doing it.
This is not the first nor the last time we will hear from experts that washing your hair often, even every day, is not bad, quite the opposite. This myth that washing your hair daily damages it or makes it more greasy is just that, a myth and nothing more, one of the many myths that we find around hair. The problem is that many people think that their hair is falling out more and avoid washing it at all costs, and they do not know that the only thing they achieve is to enhance and prolong the problem further.
The pharmacist explains that there is no problem with washing your hair every day, but there is a problem with extending the washes (something that many women avoid out of laziness or fear of damaging their hair). “The scalp is skin, how many times a day do you wash your face? A couple of times, right? That's at least washing your scalp once,” says Rodero.
“The scalp retains more moisture, it is more pleasant for the microbiota, if there is an imbalance it can more easily get worse. We tend not to wash it and we think that the scalp is dry because it flakes and the flaking is simply an overgrowth of the Malassezia furfur fungus,” clarifies Rodero.
After all, the scalp, even if it is under the hair, is skin and in this case it is very rich in sebaceous glands that nourish the hair. Therefore, as with the skin of the face, if we do not wash the scalp well, oil, dead cells, impurities and product remains will accumulate and that is when all that retained dirt becomes a feast for the microbiota of the scalp.
Hair is washed whenever needed but you have to focus on the scalp
“We should wash as frequently as our scalp needs. If you have an oily scalp, you should wash every day. And if, for example, you have washed in the morning and go to the gym in the afternoon, you should wash it again,” highlights the expert.
Regarding how to wash your hair, the expert emphasizes the importance of washing the scalp and not the hair as such. Hence, many women think that washing their hair damages it and this happens by rubbing the hair and not the roots, which is where we need to do a good cleaning.
Washing your hair daily does not thin your hair as you think, “on the contrary, because it removes the oil that is retained in the follicle due to not being cleaned, which all microorganisms love, especially the Malassezia furfur fungus,” adds Helena. What this can do is cause inflammation, dandruff and seborrheic dermatitis, which is why “if we wash we remove this degradation of fats and leave the scalp clean without any problems,” he says.
