Coconut Oil Makes My Scalp Itch – What to Do About It?

I don’t know when I fell in love with coconut oil, but it’s been a fruitful love affair. I’ve added coconut oil to my salads and created some delicious results.

Not only that. I added coconut oil to my skincare regiment, and my skin hasn’t felt this sexy in forever. Plus, the smell is heaven on earth.

I gave a little coconut oil to my dog, and his hair looks like a million bucks, so it wasn’t surprising that I was excited to use it on my hair.

Suffice it to say, I hit an obstacle I didn’t expect. My hair started to get a little itchy. I figured out the culprit was the new addition to my hair care regimen: coconut oil.

Why Would I Use Coconut Oil on my Hair?

Well, I loved coconut oil and learned all the good it can do. Plus, I saw the wonders of coconut oil by feeding it to my dog and received impressive results.

Put all of this together, and you can see where I was coming from, right? I did a little research to find out why people use this oil on their hair. I found out that many folks use it to tame their frizz.

My hair needed some taming. My frizz is the bane of my existence. It seemed like every beautiful morning was soured a bit because my hair just wouldn’t cooperate.

I was tired of dealing with my frizz, and coconut oil was offering a way out. Coconut oil is also a great moisturizer, and that’s good for anyone.

I don’t have scalp psoriasis, but it seems that some folks found that coconut oil helps. It can’t cure it or anything, but it might be able to reduce the scalp irritations these folks experience. I was pretty excited to use it, but it made me itch.

Do Others Deal With an Itchy Scalp After Using Coconut Oil?

I wondered if others were experiencing this crazy itch on their scalps. There are a lot of people using coconut oil to treat their hair, so I was worried I was the only one.

Turns out that a number of people had a similar experience. Some people described it as being quite painful. For me, it got a little itchy or uncomfortable, but that’s about it.

The people I found online said that it felt like their scalp was set on fire. I don’t know if they were being dramatic or not, but it scared me. I worried that the itchiness I felt was only the beginning. I feared it was going to get worse the longer I couldn’t fix this problem.

Some people said they were allergic to coconut oil, so they just stopped using the product altogether. I didn’t want to do that. I knew I wasn’t allergic because I applied it to my skin, and I was fine.

I searched through these comments, trying to see if anyone knew how to fix this issue, and I couldn’t find anything, but I couldn’t give up.

Why Did My Scalp Get Itchy After Applying Coconut Oil?

So far, nothing answered my original question about my itchy scalp.

I did a little more digging and started to piece together a potential answer. It wasn’t just one answer. It was a few. Knowing made me feel better, and I hope it does the same for you. Apparently, when you apply an oil like coconut oil improperly, it could lead to itchiness for various reasons.

For one, it seems like this itchiness could happen if you apply coconut oil to your scalp when there’s too much oil on your scalp.

Yes, if your scalp and hair are naturally oily, then you have to worry about this. Mine isn’t oily hence the frizzy issues I have, so this wasn’t the reason I was experiencing this crazy itchiness.

I kept digging. If you apply coconut oil to your scalp and hair but haven’t washed it in some time, that might be the reason it itches.

When you apply coconut oil to an itchy scalp, you trap nasty things that accumulated on your scalp, maybe even fungi. This leads to dandruff. I’m going to assume this is what happened to me. I hadn’t washed my hair in some time.

The other reason your hair could get itchy is if you are sensitive to coconut oil.

I wouldn’t know much about this particular problem, but I’m sure you’d know if that’s what’s going on with you. If so, you won’t be able to use coconut oil the way some of us can.

What Steps Can You Take Now That It’s Itchy?

Okay, so I figured out what was going on with my scalp, which is wonderful, but that isn’t a cure. It will help me prevent this problem the next time I try it.

You’re probably sitting there thinking I’m crazy for considering this again, but you have to understand that my hair felt good after using coconut oil on it. The real problem was my scalp. My hair loved the oil, and I love the way my hair looked afterward.

The following are steps you can take if you’re scalp is itching:

• Make an apple cider and a warm water rinse since it’s antifungal.
• Shampoo your hair a few times until the itch subsides.
• Shampoo your hair and rinse it with peppermint tea to fight dandruff.
• Add a few drops to your shampoo because it’s anti-inflammatory.
• Use some zinc pyrithione shampoo because it fights dandruff.
• Consider using a shampoo with anti-fungal ingredients, like ketoconazole.

If you buy shampoos made to fight fungi, use them correctly. Read the labels, and use the shampoos as directed. Hopefully, the itchiness goes away with only one use.

Is There Something That Could Help Prevent This Issue?

Now, you know what to do if the itchiness comes. The next thing I had to figure out is how to use coconut oil without dealing with this crazy itch.

I told you earlier that I refuse to give up on this because my frizzy hair was tamed. The only thing to do is to be a little smarter about the way I apply coconut oil.

Those who react to coconut oil can’t do anything about this. You’re going to have to figure something else out.

Now, I read that some people just put coconut oil directly on their hair strands and skip their scalps to avoid this issue. If you want to do this, you’re going to have to be careful about it, especially if you have a sensitivity to coconut oil.

Next time, I washed my hair before I put the coconut oil on. I added a few drops of tea tree oil to my shampoo to make sure there weren’t any fungi left on my scalp. This worked well for me.

The other thing that could be done is diluting the oil in a little warm water. Coconut oil and water don’t mix, just like any other oil, but if you stir it around, it’ll mix well enough.

The mix should be equal in parts unless you tried it and it still got itchy. If this is the case, I’d put a little more water. Experiment a bit until you see results. If you want to, you can just talk to your hair care specialist to see if he or she has any recommendations for you.

Hopefully, you can learn from my experience with itchy hair or everything I learned about this phenomenon. Don’t stop here though. Keep researching because there’s so much to learn regarding how you can use coconut oil.