So, I have seborrheic dermatitis, which I've been trying to get rid of for at least a good ten years now. This post finally convinced me to ask this question.
Now, for a little history.
I went no 'poo back in January, and with no 'poo, went the seb derm shampoo that I was using (Head and shoulders one in the dark blue bottle). It was preventing the flaky out breaks, and my scalp/beard wasn't scratchy, but I was still shedding a lot of hair, something that I'm attributing to irritated hair follicles from the seb derm. Within a couple weeks of discontinuing it, my seb derm came back, although this time it seems to be affecting my beard and eyebrows more than before.
First I was trying white distilled vinegar rinses at 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water. All that really did was to cause a build-up of what I thought were oils in my hair, that smelled like cured meat when it was wet. Kind of interesting. I then started doing a baking soda then vinegar rinse, which took care of the residue, although the seb derm remained unchanged.
I was poking around with google and managed to read about people curing their seb derm with tea tree oil, and also coconut oil. So I got some tea tree oil, and mixed a couple drops with probably a tablespoon or so of extra virgin olive oil, I applied it topically, let it sit for an hour, rinsed with warm water, baking soda solution, and then vinegar solution. It seems to initially knock down the severity of the seb derm patches, and reduced the itch considerably, but didn't really cause it to disappear fully. I was doing these applications roughly once a week, or sometimes twice a week.
I had someone else massage coconut oil into my scalp once, and it caused a lot of hair-shed. It actually kind of freaked me out a bit, and over the course of the next week, my hair shed was higher than normal. That pretty much scared me away from using coconut oil like that.
Right now I'm in a pretty strong flare up in my beard, which I'm combating with a 1 to 1 mix of tea tree oil and olive oil. As I'm applying this, it doesn't seem to be working. Is this a reaction of my skin to tea tree oil?
The Questions:
Has anyone else successfully dealt with their seb derm? Reduced the rate of hair shed associated with seb derm? What am I doing wrong with tea tree oil (Use a lower concentration on my skin/scalp?)? Anyone know of any good literature regarding seb derm?
I recently reintroduced dairy (a good amount of heavy cream, some cheese, a swig or two of Kefir a day) into my diet, and roughly a week and a half or so after that I've had this more intense beard outbreak. I'm kind of hoping it's not related.
Update 1-12-13
So, I'm still dealing with seb derm, and I've kind of admitted defeat and have gone back to Head and Shoulder's (blue bottle, clinical strength, selenium sulfide). It pretty much took care of the copious amounts of scales on my scalp, although I still have patches around my nose and eyebrows once in a while. I'm shampooing with that every other day, and alternate in "Grandpa's Pine Tar Shampoo" just for fun.
Although for what I did in the past year, was use a baking soda and white vinegar rinse. I added tea tree oil to this primarily for adding a scent to it, as I still think it had no therapeutic value for me. For my washing regime, I would wash my hair twice a week, Tue/Fri, where I would wet my hair, shake up 5g (1tsp?) baking soda in water, massage that into my hair, focusing on the scalp, and then rinse it out. I would then rinse with a dilute white vinegar solution, where I added some vinegar to a half pint bottle, and filled it with water. I would do a final rinse with water to make sure there wasn't that much residual vinegar.
This really didn't work, as I always waited until my hair was dry, then went through with a fine comb to loosen flakes from my scalp and brush them out. What was kind of annoying was that this was right at my hairline on my forehead, so readily visible.
As a note on diet: I eat high-fat lacto-paleo. Typical day is 2lbs of ground beef cooked in a good amount of lard/butter, with 1/2 pint frozen berries and heavy cream, assorted frozen vegetables (broccoli/stir-fry mix). Taking cod liver oil, fish oil, and calcium as supplements.
