Chris Kresser: Dandruff, I think, is an inflammatory symptom. It’s a symptom of inflammation. It’s dryness, of course, but what’s the dryness coming from? I think for most patients that I see and even myself—I’ve had some dandruff issues—it always gets worse when there’s any kind of inflammation present and any kind of stress or HPA axis activation.
From a functional perspective, of course, we’re wanting to address things at that level as much as we can, but then in terms of just the stuff we put on our head, I don’t know if you guys have heard of this company AOBiome. They’re making probiotics essentially for the skin. I think they’re called Mother Dirt now, which is probably a better name. We have this kind of bacteria on our skin that is ammonia loving. It lives off of the ammonia that is found in our sweat, and that bacteria actually do several things. One of the things they do is they promote a healthy skin barrier that keeps things from entering in through our skin that shouldn’t enter in through our skin. They also reduce body odor. You might think that all of our ancestors just smelled horrible all the time because they weren’t using shampoos and perfumes and things like that, but that’s not actually the case, and the reason for that is because of these ammonia-loving bacteria. These bacteria probably play a role in maintaining healthy oil production in the glands and keeping skin from being too dry, and that’s true on the scalp as well. I know Mother Dirt is now making a “shampoo.” I’m using air quotes if you could see me because the idea is that all of their products have this bacteria in them. It’s like essentially putting probiotic solution on your scalp. I know that some people have had success with dandruff by using this product.
There are some other natural products that have various botanicals and nutrients in them that support skin health and scalp health that can be helpful, particularly conditioners that you leave in, but I think the Mother Dirt stuff is among the more interesting interventions that you could try.