Lucy Wife and mother and lovin' it! I also love all things natural!! View all articles | Contact author

Simple, Natural Treatment for Itchy, Flaky Scalp

The simple, natural and cheap solution to your scalp issues is vinegar!  Vinegar has helped my scalp problems so much, but just rinsing the hair with vinegar, as some advocate, is not enough. What I have found that is much better is to perform vinegar treatments until you eradicate the problem.  Here's how: saturate the scalp with vinegar and cover the hair with a snug shower cap for one hour before rinsing or washing out. This should be done for four days in a row or longer, until the problem is gone. The first time I tried this, my scalp stung, as I had sores on it, but I got through it, and it really worked.

I believe it has been shown that dandruff and other scalp problems are caused by bacteria and/or fungus that live on the scalp. For some people, an overproduction of oil or diet or immune issues can cause the bacteria/ fungus to gain the upper hand and they grow out of control.

For me, I started having my problems after marrying my husband, who has always had severe dandruff- so I think I caught it from him. I've found that I need to do the vinegar treatment every few months or so, and more often during the summer, or I get reinfected (my  husband isn't so bothered by his dandruff, but my scalp gets unbearably itchy).  I have never used the raw or organic vinegar for this- I just bought a gallon of apple cider vinegar at the grocery store, as it's the acidity that kills the microbes, not the"mother". It doesn't have to be apple cider vinegar; I have used white vinegar too. For some reason, though, the apple cider vinegar seemed to work slightly better, although it could have been my imagination.

Another option that worked for me is a natural anti-dandruff shampoo from Jason. You can find it at Whole Foods. It has sulpher and neem oil in it, and so it isn't so great for your hair, but I found it worked on my scalp. Since the vinegar treatment is a little inconvenient to do, sometimes I'll keep a bottle of Jason in the shower, and use it once a month for a couple of days (after doing the initial vinegar treatment) to keep from being reinfected.

Also, getting a new pillow and changing the pillowcases often is important. I'll confess that I even took to bleaching our sheets, which isn't ideal, but interestingly, my husband's scalp got MUCH better with just that one simple step, which I think proves it is of a bacterial or fungal nature.

You may not need to worry about reinfection, particularly if you bleach your sheets and replace your pillow after the initial treatment, and you don't have a source of reinfection. For me, I found that after the initial treatment, I needed to treat again periodically, especially during the summer. But I caught it originally from my husband, who has not treated his hair, so I have a source of reinfection. I would just continue to do the treatment until it is totally gone (and then a day or two more), not just improving- kind of like when treating a yeast infection- or it could come back.

I hope that some of these suggestions work for you as they did me. I know how aggravating scalp problems can be.