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Itchy Flakes

The statistics are unmistakably clear. One out of two adult person you meet along the way has suffered from the itchy affliction, a 2012 study published at the International Journal of Cosmetic Science found so. 


A POPULAR Visayan song may have lyrics like this when it comes to flakes: “Dili tanang hup-ak kan-on; dili tanang kan-on hup-ak” (literally translated as “not all flakes you eat; not all you eat are flakes).
Some carbohydrate-laden finger foods are flakes, like the traditional banana or cassava flakes (or chips) we know from childhood. Some so-called “junk foods” have also hit the store shelves as flakes, such as corn flakes.

There are certain flakes though that you will not dream of eating, so gross to some even to imagine touching their lips. These flakes are often the itchy ones we call “dandruff.”

Dandruff flakes or scales are actually dead skin cells that the scalp sheds off regularly and they stay cohesive with each other. Shedding is a normal daily process of skin renewal. The Ranganthan & Mukhopadhyay study in 2010 noted that around 487,000 cells per square cm die normally each day. Scalp cells normally die in around a month.

These flakes of skin are too small to be noticeable.

As a skin disorder, dandruff involves an unusually large amount of flaking (up to 800,000 cells per square cm). The shedding occurs much faster between two to seven days.

 Three causes of dandruff include... [READ MORE] 
This article is published at SunStar Cebu newspaper on 05 March 2014.

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