Smelly Scalp Problem After Wearing a Hockey Helmet

Dear Anonymous:

This depends on what kind of smell we're talking about. Certain bacteria and fungus has a distinct smell. For example a sulfur smells are sulfur producing bacteria. A green musky smell is a fungus. A really strange body odor of some sort is heavy metal which causes certain oils in the body to go bad. Certain bacteria can also produce different odor like a rotting flesh.

The remedy for each of the smell is somewhat different.

For example if it's a rotting flesh. I will use milk of magnesia applied to the scalp for a couple of minutes then rinse. The solution may cause the scalp to dry more quickly so a coconut oil might be used to help protect against drying.

A green musky odor can be helped with a saturated borax in 0.5% hydrogen peroxide solution to apply for the head for a couple of minutes.

A sulfur smell may require a weak potassium permanganate solution such as 1: 10000 dilutions. For application.

A coconut is used in cases of a viral kind which is how it works and by preventing drying. Certain kinds of pathogens causes drying (as in fungus) and coconut oil seem to disourage that.

In certain woman with hormonal problems the smell of the scalp come from that sort of imbalance so either a neem oil and/or borax solution may help that, to an extent.

A person with a deficiency in copper may have a characteristic fungus green smell as lack of copper encourages fungus growth

A really bad body odor could cause really bad smell from free heavy metals. So a chlorella supplements such as 250 mg twice to three times a day will remove them slowly over a course of a month.

It should be noted that most shampoos uses sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium lauryl ether sulfate and other similar surfactants. Those tend to encourage fungal growth and hence may not help with the smell. Most shampoo uses salt or sodium chloride as a thickening agents, but ideally they should have used ammonium chloride as they have antifungal properties. The reason why they don't have it is because it has a weak ammonia smells which most consumers do not like. People tend to buy on look and feel as opposed to functionality and ingredient and it's causing problems with hair loss too. To reduce fungus, I think if there is a copper deficiency (from hair mineral analysis) for example supplementing them may slowly removed them.

In another instances a deficiency of minerals and acidity of the scalp can also cause a smell too. Getting hair mineral analysis to find the deficiency and excess heavy metals is another way to do it also.

There are stronger solutions I used, that works, such as ammonium chloride solutions, copper peptide, very weak copper chloride solutions apply directly to scalp, etc. But those require much longer detailed posting then time would have allowed me to do so.

In any event bacteria or a fungus cannot survive two extremes of the pH, namely alkaline or acidity. Since acidity were assumed to be tried with the vinegar, a more alkaline solutions using magnesium hydroxide solution as a hair rinse ia nother possibility to get rid of it, only that it needs to stay a couple of minutes to do the killing or a bit longer. In another case, i had a friend with other conditions of the scalp where tea tree oil was applied overnight to kill a sort of nasty infection where the longer the tea tree oil stayed the more it killed, but only slowly. Bacteria, fungus sometimes do not kill the instant the contact. In microbiology a simple tissue culture can require at least between 30 minutes to 2 hours time to kill almost the entire colonies of bacteria.

Ted"

03/09/2009: Anonymous replies, "Hi Ted,

Thank you so much for responding back. I really appreciate your help!

As for the smell, it's more like a really strange body odor or a musky smell.... it's definitely not rotting flesh yet.

As for your recommendations:
A green musky odor can be helped with a saturated borax in 0.5% hydrogen
peroxide solution to apply for the head for a couple of minutes.

So you're saying to saturate borax powder with .5% hydrogen peroxide so it becomes sort of like a paste? How long should I do this for?

As for the Chlorella supplements, I will try that immediately.

Lastly, how do you get a hair mineral analysis?

Regards and thanks once again"

03/09/2009: Ted replies, "If it is a musky kind. I would try a 10-30% ammonium chloride solution and apply on the scalp, for a 10 minutes then rinse. Or a weaker solution amminium chloride 10 % apply thinly on the scap then leave it on, but still applied twice a day. If it stings, then it is a confirmed fungus. The problems should be gone within a couple of days of minimum two times a day application.

A more agressive solution where there is some bacteria and fungus would require some milk of magnesia solution, say a tablepoon per glass with 10% ammonium chloride solution plus 2 tablespoon of pure xylitol powder then use that to apply twice a day thinkly on the area. Again it takes a couple of days to get that gone away if it was a correct assessment.

It's a matter of trial and error, as to which is which.

Ted

Be sure to clean & disinfect your helmet regularly; better yet alternate two (or more) helmets: use one while the other soaking in borax solution overnight; then clean it with a brush, then rinse in fresh water several times. Then dip helmet into a clean borax rinse, swing out the excess water, then leave out in the sun to drain then dry/disinfect (UV light is a very potent disinfectant). When it's dry, switch helmets. This will help prevent re-infection/cross-contamination. If your helmet doesn't dry fast enough, get a third helmet. For quick/convenient processing, line up 3 buckets near an outdoor faucet or wash basin like an assembly line: 1) Overnight Soak, 2)Fresh Water Rinse, 3)Final Borax Rinse; Helmet Stand (ideally on/just above grass, (chlorophyl is a very potent cleaner/disinfectant/oxygenator).

After each wash, use the dirty borax water to kill ants, broadleaf weeds, ground ivy, creeping charlie, unwanted grass; OR to fertilize flowers & & vegetables (do a bit of research before pouring on desirable grass/plants)! Some plants/soils suffer from boron deficiency: including, broccoli, cabbage, strawberries, cauliflower, sunflowers.