Your hair can feel waxy for various reasons, such as suffering from seborrheic dermatitis, not knowing your hair texture, using wrong hair products, unclean scalp, poor blood circulation, unclean accessories, or environmental factors. You can fix half of your issues causing waxy hair with a clean and healthy lifestyle, which will surely make a difference on your scalp.
It’s definitely annoying when you can’t get that waxy build-up out from your hair. No matter how many times you wash it, this waxy build-up still remains, annoying you to the end. You must have tried many different shampoos and conditioners, even tips and tricks from your family and friends, but nothing seems to work.
You need to understand the problem first and try to know what causes this waxy build-up in your hair.
Why is your hair not able to free flow and feel healthy and clean? Once you understand the reasons, you’ll be able to find how to clean it properly. So, let’s take a look at what is causing this waxy build-up to your hair!
Reasons why you have waxy hair
Let’s explore some of the reasons because of which you couldn’t have clean and fresh-smelling hair. Maybe you are going through one of these issues and haven’t noticed yet.
1. Seborrheic Dermatitis
It is a prevalent skin condition that causes greasy hair as one of its side effects. Basically, suppose you’re suffering from this condition. In that case, your sebaceous glands create excess oil, or sebum, making your skin and scalp oily.
You might also be suffering from this condition if one of your underlying problems is hormone imbalance.
There are many triggers for this condition, such as stress, weather, diet, genetic predisposition, and hormones.
2. Hair texture
This is a very common thing that most people ignore, which is choosing hair products depending on your hair texture. The issue is people aren’t even aware of their hair texture. While straight hair is easy to detect, people can sometimes not identify between having wavy or curly hair.
To maintain your hair texture, you need different shampoos, conditioners, masks, and so on.
So, when you randomly pick up any shampoo and conditioner, it might not work for you at all and leave your hair waxy, even after washing it many times. The same goes for the thickness of the hair.
3. Expensive hair products
What is expensive might not always be the best option. Also, just because it’s expensive doesn’t mean it suits your hair.
Sometimes, local products work wonders as compared to expensive shampoos. Unfortunately, these products might be unknowingly leaving your hair greasy and waxy.
4. Scalp build-up
People don’t often pay attention to their scalp as much as they do to other things. Since the scalp isn’t visible to us 24/7, we tend to ignore it the most.
This is why most issues go unnoticed, like dandruff, sweat, waxy build-up, and not getting out shampoo properly.
These things build-up, and you don’t even realize it, causing so many other issues. If you’re running late for work in the morning, you might not be able to get that shampoo out thoroughly, another major reason for waxy scalp.
5. Poor blood circulation
Maintaining your hair and scalp are also essential aspects of living a healthy life.
So, when it comes to your scalp ensuring proper blood circulation is necessary too. And there are small things in your daily life that you can do to have proper blood circulation, such as combing your hair, massaging them with oil in intervals, and eating healthy.
If you don’t take care of your scalp and ensure proper blood circulation, you’ll face issues like having waxy hair. Also, things will build up at different spots on your scalp if not combed or taken care of often.
6. Hair accessories
You need to take care of accessories used in your hair, and by this, I mean your hairbrush, hair towels, hats or scarves, and so on.
These things should be cleaned, especially your hairbrush, which should be cleaned in regular intervals. Then you won’t have oil residue in them, and they will only help by not adding any further oil to the hair.
7. Environmental factors
Especially in cities, there is so much pollution in the air that it seeps into every aspect of your life.
Even your hair too is not protected, as this pollution regularly messes with your hair. Not only a waxy scalp but things like dandruff, itchiness, and hair fall are common too.
How to get rid of waxy scalp?
Depending on the issue that you’re facing, solutions differ too.
- Learn about your hair texture and buy shampoo and conditioner according to your texture. This will help you maintain your natural texture too.
- For black people, their hair texture is complicated to manage as compared to others. So for them having a specific haircare is necessary. It prevents breakage when their hair is tightly coiled.
- Don’t go after strong shampoos, as they can damage your hair.
- Don’t use any hair products such as wax or such styling products.
- Clean your hairbrush, towels, pillowcases, and accessories from time to time.
- Keep a healthy and clean diet.
- Check your water system. There might be a possibility the water isn’t suited to your hair and scalp, causing waxy build-up.
- For some people, apple cider vinegar works wonders too. Apply and massage onto your scalp and leave it for 10 minutes before washing your hair with shampoo.
- For some, conditioner doesn’t work at all, causing immediate waxy hair. So, if you notice this issue, immediately stop using the conditioner.
- Ensure you massage the shampoo, clean the scalp, and then rinse it well to not leave any residue behind.
- Exfoliate your scalp.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why does my hair feel weird after washing it?
There can be multiple reasons for your hair to feel weird after washing it. But the most important things to watch out for are the quality of the water and the kind of shampoo you’re using. If both these are working well for you, then you can move onto other reasons.
How do you properly wash your hair?
You should wet your scalp correctly, take shampoo in hand, mix a little water with it, and apply it to your scalp. It would be best if you massaged properly to make sure it’s clean but be gentle while doing it.
Then wash it thoroughly as you don’t want to leave any residue. Then, you can apply your conditioner and wash it out after a few minutes. For drying, make sure to pat your hair with a towel and not rub it.
How often should you wash your hair?
I believe washing your hair three times a week is a good thing to follow. At the same time, there are people out there who shampoo daily. But doing so strips your hair of its natural oils, which are good for the scalp and hair.
Does drinking water hydrate your hair?
Drinking water does help keep your hair healthy. Only if you regularly consume 8-9 glasses of water. Water definitely helps your scalp remain hydrated and keep hair cells work in the way they are supposed to.
Why does my hair feel so gummy?
If your hair feels gummy, sticky, or waxy, that means that your hair is pretty damaged from the inside and need help in getting back to their healthy form.
This happens because of multiple reasons. So you might want to look closely at what is causing this and start taking care of your hair.
To summarize
Your hair should be as important to you as any other part of your body. If you take care of your skin, the same goes for your hair to make sure it’s healthy. There can be multiple reasons why your hair feels waxy, even after you’ve washed it many times.
But half of these problems can be solved by maintaining a healthy and clean lifestyle. You need to understand your hair and choose products accordingly that would suit your hair’s texture.
If you think you’re suffering from a medical issue making your hair so waxy, it is better to visit a dermatologist and ask for help.
