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View Full Version : odd things from my scalp



Sossity
May 23rd, 2008, 02:35 AM
I notice sometimes when I scratch my scalp from a little itch, I get a little hard clear yellowish thing in my nail off my scalp, the same type one gets from a popped blackhead on the face, it looks like a small grain of rice, & is a little oily, sorry if I grossed anyone out, but what is it? is it scalp acne? I sometimes also get small sore bumps on my scalp, that go away in a few days. I have been getting these for quite awhile, when I was using commercial sulphate/cone hair soaps.

Sossity

Riot Crrl
May 23rd, 2008, 03:19 AM
Probably just some little clogged pores and sebum plugs. They aren't nits, if they were they would cling on really strongly to one hair strand and refuse to let go.

Dvips
May 23rd, 2008, 07:40 AM
Probably just some little clogged pores and sebum plugs. :agree: I get them all the time.

jera
May 23rd, 2008, 08:56 AM
That's just sebum the scalp's natural oils that collect under your nails when you scrape. Try not to scrape though. It's better to leave those oils where they are to nourish your hair. It's a good thing to have cuz it keeps hair shiny and hydrated.:D

Much better than having a dry scalp with no oils at all. :( Dry is a recipe for disaster.

lora410
May 23rd, 2008, 09:04 AM
I get them to as well as what I call scalp acne. Drives me insane :lol:

patissegrietje
September 30th, 2008, 06:35 AM
:D Happy to hear more people have those! I had 2 interns with lice running around my office recently, and ofcourse they only found out about them after a long period.
I bought one of those horrible metal nitcombs to check my hair, and didn't find anything crawling on my head, but keep finding the things you are talking about...
I'm checking over and over again, but no 'beasts' so i guess it is probably sebum like Riot Crrl says!

Marlowe
September 30th, 2008, 08:02 AM
Patissegrietje, at least your interns are taking steps to get rid of their lice. You'd be disgusted at how many people running around apparently have lice and don't care. My sister was a hair stylist for many years in a wee town where there was only one hair cutting place so she saw the same people over an extended period of time and she saw quite a few people that had *very* bad lice infestations and they never seemed to do anything about it since their scalp was always crawling with the little critters when they came in. There was no way these people could not have known they had lice, it was that bad. And to make matters worse the person who the place forbid the stylists to mention it to the customers so as to not anger the customers. To this day I'm paranoid about resting my head against the back of a chair in a movie theater or and the like after growing up on the lice horror stories my sister told.

Vitalai
September 30th, 2008, 02:20 PM
I get that too. Also, if I scratch my head, I get little gritty yellowish-white things stuck under my nail. Is this build-up? :ponder:

ccmuffingirl
September 30th, 2008, 06:27 PM
Seems like that's your scalps natural sebum (oil). Your scalp sebum can range from liquidy to waxy in feeling.

ccmuffingirl
September 30th, 2008, 06:28 PM
p.s. you probably have backed up sebum in some of your hair follicles and it's producing scalp acne.

Vitalai
September 30th, 2008, 09:52 PM
Oh, I see. Should I do a clarifying rinse then?

Friesiangirl
September 30th, 2008, 10:03 PM
Ah, this may be what I have! I usually have snow-white colored sebum, yet I have some small bumps in areas that sometimes scab over. No hair loss or anything. I suppose it may just be "scalpne"

Hayley

rubyredslippers
October 1st, 2008, 12:06 AM
Patissegrietje, at least your interns are taking steps to get rid of their lice. You'd be disgusted at how many people running around apparently have lice and don't care. My sister was a hair stylist for many years in a wee town where there was only one hair cutting place so she saw the same people over an extended period of time and she saw quite a few people that had *very* bad lice infestations and they never seemed to do anything about it since their scalp was always crawling with the little critters when they came in. There was no way these people could not have known they had lice, it was that bad. And to make matters worse the person who the place forbid the stylists to mention it to the customers so as to not anger the customers. To this day I'm paranoid about resting my head against the back of a chair in a movie theater or and the like after growing up on the lice horror stories my sister told.

I'm surprised the stylists didn't turn them out! When I was younger the children of family friends got lice and they went to the hairdresser, and it was the hairdresser who diagnosed the buggers. They turned them out without cutting the hair because they didn't want it to spread to other clients. Very sanitary and very reasonable, I believe. But then, not such a small town.

AmandaPanda
October 1st, 2008, 12:00 PM
I'm surprised the stylists didn't turn them out! When I was younger the children of family friends got lice and they went to the hairdresser, and it was the hairdresser who diagnosed the buggers. They turned them out without cutting the hair because they didn't want it to spread to other clients. Very sanitary and very reasonable, I believe. But then, not such a small town.

I was thinking the same thing. I live in a small town that has only one hairdresser, and my niece got lice and went in for a cut. I think the hairdresser did cut her hair but turned her out before she could finish with the layering

Marlowe
October 1st, 2008, 02:15 PM
Well, as I said, the stylists *couldn't* say anything, else the person who ran the salon would have fired them. It was a cheap, horrible, probably unsanitary place, the kind that gives all those nightmare haircuts you hear stories about on this forum. I can give personal testimony to that, I spent my entire life up until a few years ago with baaad haircuts courtesy my sister. None of the stylists at that place knew how to do anything other than the most basic haircuts on stereotypical straight caucasian hair. Place didn't even do anything else like perms or dye jobs. Which is why I always cringe at the advice on these forums when someone asks about a good place to go get a trim and people pipe up with "Oh, go to one of those cheap $10.95 haircut places, they'll do what you tell them to do.", that's the kind of place this was. Think about *that* the next time you go in for a trim, ha. Little creepy crawlies jumping from the combs onto your beautiful classic length hair which is like Disneyland to them...

heidi w.
October 1st, 2008, 03:23 PM
Sebum.

We all have it.

Correct: it can be a little more liquidy-ish to kinda hard and crusty and can range in hue from nearly snow white to quite yellow-y, even a hint of grayishness, depending on how long it's been hanging around and at what stage (after a hair wash and between hair washes) you are.

Everyone's sebum production is different as this correlates with one's hormones. Teens for example, tend to have a pool of the stuff. They could open their own wax catching factories, and thus, in these instances, daily washing may indeed be necessary. Then the other end of the spectrum, the octegenarians -- their production is now nearly nil, and can easily get away with once a week hair washes .... maybe a tad longer!

This spectrum depends wholly on individual differences, so for the octegenarian that continues to have a vat of sebum up top, well, yeah, wash more.

It is possible to have mini inflamations or even outright infections on the scalp. Sebum is part of the acid-mantle that protects the skin itself. Sebum is not an oil (although we describe it as such in discussions, often): it is a waxy ester. In this way it resists and even holds on to dirt, scalp skin detris that naturally sloughs off, and forms a protection so that our hair follicles and the skin itself remains healthy and moist, ... you get the idea. Sebum is produced all over the body. The sebacious gland is a separate gland from a hair follicle. The dispersion of these follicles changes over the skin -- so the number you have on the scalp isn't the same as your arm, for example.

http://www.naturaloils.com/shop/jojoba%20refined.htm

It is actually a liquid wax. Jojoba is most generally referred to as an "oil" however, it is considered chemically, liquid wax esters. The composition of these waxy esters are long mono-unsaturated fatty acid chains, coupled with long mono-unsaturated fatty alcohol chains, primarily C-24 to C-50 molecules. Jojoba Oil has been documented to display increases in skin surface suppleness, and clinical efficacy on dry skin, lasting for many hours.

Part of the acid mantle includes some bacteria that is healthy....and eats up some of that sebum (a simple explanation), but sometimes, when you've waited too long, the bacteria produce more to eat the more sebum and then you can get a foul odor. This is about the time that the color might change from white to yellow-y. Wait long enough and some of it goes down the hair a bit, maybe max of 6 inches -- most less than this, and can really reek. Then the sebum can kind of dry, even, and cake on.

I have seborrheic dermatitus which is all about super production of sebum and overly fast skin cell production (a form of dandruff). If I fail to wash about every third day I can have quite the bumps, the stink, and major itching. The bumps, if left unwashed will actually become filled with sebum and when squeezed, weep, and then even bleed. Then it crusts over and the skin and crust adheres strongly to the hair strand and I need tweezers to remove sheets.

To help with lifting any dried or cake-y sebum I scritch my scalp before every hair wash.

I am also rigorous about cleaning my detangling tools each and every hair wash.

I am equally vigorous about keeping a clean pillowcase, and clean pillowcase liners.

LICE
Hairdressers would be wise to turn away such clients so infested. It's massively easy to spread lice, and is a health code violation, at least in the US, to participate in this. This is why combs and brushes must be DISINFECTED after each use on each client's head.

It can take a while for someone to be aware they have lice!

It can take even longer to get rid of head lice. They are becoming more resistive to usual topical treatments.

I can see a hairdresser not realizing a client has it until they're into the hair a bit....and then have to dismiss them.

This is also why aprons should be cleaned and changed, and are used, in part.

They should be spritzing down chairs and keeping after hair bits on the floor of the salon, too. There are quite a few regulations concerning health codes that a salon functions under to have its business license.

heidi w.

Jean_Grey
October 1st, 2008, 03:53 PM
When I was in high school, one of the most mortifying moments in my life was when I was told I couldn't get a hair cut because I had lice. What made it worse, is I had my mom check my scalp every day for a month because my head was itching so bad, and I thought I had them. Neither of us knew what we were looking for, though. Never looked on the hairs themselves for the nits, and my mom said my scalp was the cleanest scalp she'd ever seen. (Because I'd been scraping it raw every shower. No sebum at all! My hair was also a mess.)

The owner of that salon is doing the customers a grave disservice. It's so much better to know and take care of it. They might not even know what to look for. While I was embarrassed at the moment, I was so glad to know I wasn't crazy and get that nasty infection taken care of!

MadHatter
October 1st, 2008, 07:53 PM
I had lice for a 6 month span when I was a kid. Nothing except a scrip would get rid of them.
And it was a baaad infestation. I think it got so bad because my dad kept denying it was lice. FLEAS, he said. Thanks a lot, pop.
People think that if you get lice, you're dirty. But from what I've read here, lice prefer clean heads to not-washed ones.

patissegrietje
October 5th, 2008, 01:58 PM
To this day I'm paranoid about resting my head against the back of a chair in a movie theater or and the like after growing up on the lice horror stories my sister told.

:s I'm afraid i got a little paranoid too; keep checking, but i guess lice don't like CO's and ACV rinses to begin with; maybe they just avoided me :D
Ever since my interns got infested i keep seeing people scratching their heads, in the train, in the supermarket, the cinema...
I'm still checking my pillowcase every morning but never see anything.
Would be a disaster with my hair since it tangles easily and is difficult to go through... Had a lot of breakage the last time i used the metal nitcomb :-(

Rosepatrice
October 5th, 2008, 02:29 PM
Does this mean you should wash your hair more often, or less?

berr
October 5th, 2008, 04:01 PM
Geez.. now I ITCH. What is it about reading these kinds of threads that make me itch all over? Off to the shower.

mira-chan
October 5th, 2008, 04:18 PM
Does this mean you should wash your hair more often, or less?

Well since lice like clean hair, washing less or oiling more would be beneficial if you don't have lice and don't want to get them. Wearing hair up also reduces the chances of getting them drastically if you are at risk of it.