Dandruff: shampoos in flight

Television remains one of the most powerful means of influencing people. In many commercials you can see men sighing doomedly when looking at black jackets. Their sadness is so understandable - the poor guys have dandruff! Or mysteriously smiling girls, every now and then flashing on the screen and presenting shampoos to their boyfriends... One gets the impression that only the stronger sex suffers from this disease and that it is very simple to cure it - just regularly wash your hair with a special product.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Let's start with the fact that about 50 percent of people suffer from seborrhea - this is the scientific name for dandruff, with men and women equally. As Elena Ilchenko, senior consultant-trichologist of the AMD Laboratories network of medical centers explained, age does not matter. Dandruff often appears in adolescents aged 14-15 and can persist until old age. Occasionally it occurs even in young children. It is impossible to name a specific cause for this condition: all advertising claims that the culprits of dandruff are bacteria living on the scalp are only partially true. Many patients who turn to doctors with this problem say that the use of purely bacterial preparations did not help them - at best, dandruff disappeared for a short time, only to reappear at the most inopportune moment.
There are several causes of dandruff, so specialists at medical centers always prescribe comprehensive treatment to their patients. What causes these disgusting greasy scales to appear? Metabolic disorders in the body. Unhealthy diet and diet problems. Hereditary features of skin structure, metabolism, skin microflora. The appearance of dandruff can also be influenced by the state of the immune system in general. As you can see, this is a really serious disease that cannot be cured with any one remedy - shampoo or antibiotics, much less with all the favorite folk methods and grandmother's recipes.
To get rid of dandruff, you need not only to use hygiene products for problem skin, but also to take care of your health in general. Do not try to cope with it yourself - it is as difficult as curing, for example, a stomach ulcer or pneumonia. You can get rid of seborrhea only in special medical centers that treat hair-related diseases. After a thorough examination, patients are prescribed local treatment - special highly concentrated and, by the way, expensive products for head hygiene, hair and skin care, which very effectively remove dandruff. Plus general medications: vitamins, herbs, nutritional supplements, restoratives. All this, as well as a certain course of diets, is selected by the doctor for each patient individually.
As a rule, the first manifestations of dandruff and, in general, any other diseases on the scalp are invisible, so a person is not aware that something wrong is happening to him. The head sometimes itches, sometimes it doesn’t, dandruff sometimes appears and then disappears... The inexperienced layman usually attributes all this to the change of seasons, stress factors, changes in health status - for example, you got sick with the flu, and here they are - dandruff! Women are often convinced that dandruff appears as a result of hair coloring or perming and that over time it will disappear on its own, just as it appeared. Alas! Such symptoms should alert you and make you see a doctor. The sooner you do this, the better - any disease is much easier and cheaper to cure at the initial stage than when it develops and becomes chronic. Unfortunately, most often people turn to medical centers precisely when the piles of repulsive scales on the hair can no longer be ignored, and this indicates that the disease has reached a chronic stage. The course of treatment and observation is usually calculated for a minimum of three months, and then it is recommended to periodically visit the doctor for several years.
There are signs that can help you suspect a problem before it becomes a real hassle to wear black. For example, you should be wary if acne or purulent rashes appear on the face, redness occurs between the eyebrows, in the nasolabial folds, and in the chin area. It should be a concern if hair quickly becomes dirty - hair washed in the morning looks unclean by the evening, sometimes even acquires an unpleasant stale smell, which clearly indicates a metabolic disorder in the thickness of the skin. Small pimples may appear on the scalp, which feel unpleasant when touched. If you experience hair loss, you should sound the alarm and immediately contact a dermatologist or trichologist.
In order not to provoke the appearance of dandruff, doctors advise eating as little food as possible that contains an excess amount of easily digestible carbohydrates - these are everyone's favorite rolls, white bread, flour, pasta, as well as all kinds of sweets - sugar, candy, chocolate. Do not abuse fatty, fried and salty foods and forget about fast food.
Marina LOBANOVA.


What if you stop washing your hair with them?
There are two opinions about anti-dandruff shampoos: they are considered either another scam, or the last word in the fight against dandruff. But neither is true.
Special shampoos (they are in every major cosmetic series for hair) can really rid a person of dandruff.
But this is not a medicine, but a product for caring for the hair and scalp of a patient with seborrhea. All of them are developed according to the same principle and, in addition to conventional detergents, also contain exfoliating, antimicrobial, antifungal agents (selenium compounds, salicylic alcohol, tar, etc.). They “work” simply: they remove accumulated dandruff, eliminate itching and soften the scalp. After the shampoo is washed off, a zinc-based substance remains on it, which will suppress the fungus until the next wash.
It’s clear that when the anti-dandruff shampoo is changed to regular, there is no one to guard the enemy, and dandruff appears again. However, sitting on Head & Shoulders for many years is useless - the harmful fungus will soon get used to it and learn to ignore it. Some doctors advise having several different anti-dandruff products and using them alternately. Moreover, each time you need to soap your hair twice: in the first wash, the shampoo will wash away the dirt and degrease the hair and skin, and in the second, special substances will begin to act.
Although this, of course, is not enough: if you want to dress up in a black jacket, you will have to go to the doctor.