I often have people write to me describing a burning, itching, tight, and painful scalp which may or may not include red or pink coloration with or without little bumps.
Quite often, these folks have hair loss to go along with this condition and they want to know what is causing this cycle and how to stop it because it's quite painful and disturbing.
I'll go over causes and treatments for this in the following article.
Did The Scalp Inflammation Occur Before The Hair Loss Or Shedding Started?: Determining what this condition is often requires for you to pinpoint when it started.
If you noticed changes in your scalp after hair loss or shedding started, then this is often inflammation that is the result of many hairs being shed out at one time.
You'll often see a pink or red scalp follow this as well as feel some tightness, tingling, burning or discomfort.
Some specialists call this "burning scalp syndrome" and although many argue that there is a psychological component to it (as the result of losing so much hair), I tend to disagree.
Anyone who has felt this pain on their scalp knows that this pain is real.
There was a time when I had to put ice on my scalp and I actually tried using sun burn aloe spray to relieve the burning.
Deducting that your stress and your thoughts about the loss would make your scalp turn angry, red, and inflamed is just too big of a jump to be believable to me.
Treating this condition often requires knocking back the inflammation.
I firmly believe that you should try topicals for this first.
Tea tree oil, jojoba oil, aloe, and emu oil all can provide both healing relief and they contain anti inflammatory properties.
It helps to rotate them and dilute them though.
Some doctors will want to try steroids and other internal medications to lessen inflammation but I feel that this should be a last resort.
Too many of these medications will only worsen the shedding or cause more internal upheaval that can kick off a new TE (telogen effluvium.
) Bumps Or Scalp Pain And Redness That Occurs Before The Hair Loss Starts: If the problem began before you started shedding hair then it is logical to wonder if the scalp issue is not causing the hair loss.
And there can be many scalp issues that precede shedding including ringworm, scalp infections, yeast overgrowth, or allergic reactions to products or food.
These conditions often require treating the medical issue through a doctor's supervision.
Once the issue has been resolved, the hair loss should then slow.
Correctly using the topicals that I mentioned before can also help with the pain and don't interfere with what the doctor is suggesting.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't just live with or try to cope with a painful and burning scalp.
Get to the bottom of why this is happening.
If the issue started after the shedding, it's important to find and treat the trigger that is causing this whole thing and stop it.
With that done, your scalp will be in a much better position to heal itself.