Scalp health is essential to hair health. In this article, we suggest a 4-step routine to take care of your scalp in order to grow thicker and healthier hair.
How often do you spend thinking about your hair's health and appearance? What about your scalp’s health and appearance?
If you’re like the majority of people, you spend more time focusing on how your hair looks and feels than how your scalp looks and feels. But in reality, your hair’s vitality and appearance starts with your scalp. If your scalp isn’t healthy, your hair won’t be healthy either.
That’s why we believe you should have a routine to take care of your scalp, just the same way you have a routine to take care of your hair. In this article, we outline four steps you should incorporate into your daily scalp routine to help you grow thicker hair.
Why You Need to Care About Your Scalp First
Your scalp is skin, just like the skin on the rest of your body. And like the skin on the rest of your body, the skin on your scalp can suffer from conditions like dryness, irritation, product buildup, and more. Each of these can negatively affect your hair's growth.
Take buildup, for example. Your scalp can experience buildup of haircare products, oils, dead skin cells, etc that t impacts your hair follicles. As a result, your hair will grow thinner, and break more easily.
Many of the problems that you experience with your hair (breakage, thinning, loss etc.) can be traced back to your scalp’s health. Thus, it’s important to create a strong daily scalp routine to ensure that your scalp, and, by extension your hair, stays strong and vibrant.
4 Steps to a Healthy Scalp
For the best hair growth and appearance results, you should have a scalp care routine, just like you have a hair care routine. Here’s what we recommend incorporating into your daily scalp care rituals:
#1: Use a Scalp Treatment
Most people use shampoo and conditioner daily. While those products are important for taking care of your hair, scalp treatments address the issue of hair growth itself.
Oxidative stress accelerates the scalp’s aging, and can damage the hair inside the follicle before its emergence from the scalp, causing hair shedding, hair loss and premature baldness. Keeping the hair follicles as healthy as possible stimulates growth of stronger and more beautiful hair.
A better formula to give you beautiful and thick hair is
shampoo + conditioner + leave-in scalp treatment
Mereltä is a once-a-day weightless serum, scientifically formulated to create optimal results for your scalp and hair. Mereltä Root Renewal serum supports the scalp with a unique complex of algae, encouraging thicker, healthier hair with more volume, improved texture and renewed softness.
Using a scalp treatment should be a nonnegotiable part of your hair care routine, just like using shampoo and conditioner.
#2: Choose Clean and Gentle Shampoos And Conditioners
You can care for your scalp by looking for gentle shampoos and conditioners with safe ingredients for your scalp.
Many shampoos and conditioners are made with dangerous ingredients like sulfates. Sulfates are what create the suds in your shampoo. Basically, sulfates are strong detergents—too strong, really, for your scalp.
Sulfates don’t just clean your hair, they strip it (and your scalp) of healthy oils. Using sulfates can cause dryness and irritation on your scalp. While sulfates may make your hair feel squeaky clean, they also hurt your scalp and hair in the long run. Similarly, parabens can cause a number of hair problems, including dryness, irritation, and hair loss. Look for products labeled “sulfate and paraben-free.”
#3: Work in a Massage During Your Shower
Who doesn’t love a scalp massage?
Besides feeling great and releasing tension, a scalp massage can help stimulate blood flow to this region of your body, helping to prevent buildup and to promote growth.
Incorporating a scalp massage into your shower routine is a great way to keep your scalp healthy. Using your fingertips, start at the base of your hairline and work your way up to the crown of your head, applying gentle pressure as you go.
If you haven’t tried this technique before, you’ll be surprised how relaxed you feel afterwards.
#4: Mind How You Brush Your Hair
Are you brushing your hair mindlessly? Think again! Brushing your hair can cause serious scalp stress and hair breakage. Thankfully, there are a few steps you can follow to make de-tangling safe.
First, toss aside the brush and use a comb when your hair is wet. Wet hair is more fragile than dry hair. That means it’s more vulnerable to damage and stress. If you brush your hair when it’s wet you risk breakage.
Second, start at the ends of your hair, not at the root. Brushing at the root can strain your scalp and hair follicles. Using a comb, detangle the knots at the end of your hair gently until they’re worked free. Then, slowly move up to the root, avoiding any harsh pulling. That way, you won’t accidentally stress your scalp.
Scalp Care: A Key Part of Your Daily Routine
If you’re longing for stronger, healthier hair, but haven’t addressed your scalp care, then you’re missing a key part of your daily routine. Scalp care is the root of hair care: you can’t have vibrant hair without having a healthy scalp.
Fortunately, crafting a scalp routine is simple. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can have a strong, healthy scalp in no time.
To learn more about your hair and scalp, take our Hair Assessment Quiz.