By Viktoria
Updated: February 15, 2023
7 minutes
With every passing day, everyone is getting so busy with their lives that they mostly forget about taking care of their health, body, and hair. Hair needs a bit of extra care but they are neglected the most. Due to a lack of proper hair care, dandruff, dryness, hair fall, and split ends are becoming common problems for every person.
To combat these hair problems and save your hair from damage, you can try olive oil. It is an extremely beneficial oil providing a number of benefits. This oil helps in nourishment, proper growth, smoothness, and reduction of split ends.
So, let’s talk about these benefits in detail and some ways you can use olive oil to have healthy and beautiful hair.
Is Olive Oil Beneficial for Hair?
1. Hydrates and Conditions
Olive oil contains Oleic acid and squalane. Both of these products not only make the hair hydrated and soft but also help to retain the moisture in the hair.
Olive oil is an emollient and also has the ability to go in hair shaft depth. This softens and moisturizes your hair. To increase the smoothness, Squalane, another emollient plays an important role. In this way, you can have smooth and dryness-free hair using olive oil.
2. Promotes Hair Growth
Most of us love healthy and long hair. Olive oil can help you in having healthy hair. Let’s see how.
Due to the presence of Oleuropein and Vitamin E, the growth of hair is stimulated. Olive oil also limits the production of sebum whose excess amount can be a hindrance to hair growth. Furthermore, Vitamin E is an antioxidant so our scalp also remains healthy.
Although there is not much research on this, experiments conducted on mice showed effective results.
3. Decreases Hair Fall
One of the main reasons for our hair fall is excess Dihydrotestosterone, also called DHT. It restricts the hair growth cycle and damages the hair follicles making our hair weak. An enzyme 5-alpha reductase is responsible for the conversion of testosterone into DHT.
So, olive oil works by limiting the production of DHT and restricting the enzyme to stop conversion thus minimizing hair fall.
4. Provides Nourishment
The next excellent property of Olive oil is that this amazing oil nourishes your hair. It has unsaturated fats and other nutrients as discussed above that hydrate your hair and provide nourishment to them.
When you apply olive oil, massaging increases the circulation of blood and causes hair nourishment. In this way, your hair remains healthy and shiny for a long time.
5. Soothes the Scalp
A healthy scalp is necessary for our hair to stay healthy and dandruff-free. But, mostly our scalp becomes itchy due to dandruff, bacteria, fungi, and clogged hair follicles.
So, olive oil moisturizes the hair to make them dandruff-free and has anti-clogging properties. Moreover, It also shows effective results against bacteria and fungi. That is how olive oil helps the scalp stay healthy.
6. Reduces Split Ends
Split ends are the greatest hindrance to having healthy hair. Although olive oil cannot fix the split ends, it surely can prevent them.
Split ends are mainly due to dry hair causing the hair to break and split. As olive oil has a moisturizing effect so it can prevent dryness. In addition to this, it provides our hair elasticity. So, Both of these factors play an important role in minimizing split ends.
To have better results, you can cut your split ends a bit and then use olive oil.
7. Improves Complexion and Texture
Olive oil is rich in nutrients that are required for our hair to be healthy. It provides strength to our hair preventing them from breaking. This increases hair volume. Its hair conditioning properties smoothen the hair making them appear soft and shiny.
In this way, various factor contributes to improving the complexion of our hair and its texture.
8. Lessens Hair Breakage
We talked about clogged follicles, dandruff, dry scalp, and bacterial and fungal reactions, all of these factors contribute to hair breakage. Free radicals also damage our hair.
So, olive oil has the ability to treat all of the above conditions by being an antioxidant, moisturizer, anti-bacterial, and antiviral agent. Also, it has a high amount of omega-3 fatty acids which strengthens our hair. So, this is how olive oil prevents hair breakage by providing a number of actions.
What are the Disadvantages of Using Olive Oil on Hair?
Everything that has advantages comes with disadvantages too. As for olive oil, it has many benefits but also some drawbacks.
1. May Cause Acne
Olive oil is a heavy oil that makes it difficult for the skin to soak up the oil completely. This leads to the clogging of pores. Furthermore, it can invite bacteria to the clogged area. Resultantly, dust, dead skin, and bacteria gather there leading to breakouts on the skin.
2. Could Irritate the Scalp
When you apply Olive oil to your hair, it may irritate your scalp. This is due to the fact that olive oil is like food to yeast. When you have dandruff, yeast-causing dandruff feeds on olive oil and can increase dandruff.
Additionally clogged pores can trap dirt and germs. So dandruff and dirt can irritate your scalp.
3. Can Result in Rashes
Olive oil can cause allergic reactions such as respiratory reactions and contact dermatitis depending upon its use. When you apply the oil to your skin, it can cause allergic reactions and skin rashes in more sensitive people leading to redness and itching. So, do a patch test before using it.
How to Use Olive Oil on Hair to Reap Maximum Benefits?
Using the right amount of olive oil depends on your needs. After determining the correct amount for your hair, you can use that amount in a variety of ways to attain maximum effectiveness.
1. Use it for a Conditioning Massage
You can use the Olive Oil as a conditioning massage. All you need to do is to massage the hair oil on your scalp and cover your head with a bathing cap. After 15 minutes, you can take a bath with any shampoo to have beautiful silky hair.
2. Make an Egg and Olive Oil Mask
Using an Egg and Olive oil mask is another great way to have healthy hair. The egg has vitamin A, Vitamin E, and biotin which all together strengthen your hair. After mixing 2 tablespoons of egg whites with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, you need to apply the mixture to wet hair for 20 minutes. Then wash it. You can use yolks if your hair is dry.
3. Apply Olive Oil with Aloe Vera Gel
If you want to grow your hair long, then this one’s for you. Mixing 2 tablespoons of Aloe Vera gel with 3 tablespoons of olive oil can help your hair grow long. All you need to do is to mix them and massage them on your head for almost 10 minutes. After half an hour, rinse them and see better growth in some time.
4. Make a Honey and Olive Oil Conditioner
The next way you can use your olive oil is to use a mixture of 100 ml of honey with 50 ml of olive oil. You need to warm this mixture in the microwave for a quarter of a minute and leave it on your hair for 30 minutes. This method can help in the nourishment of your hair.
5. Add Mayonnaise to Olive Oil for a Nourishing Mask
Want your hair to be shiny and strong? Then take 50 ml of mayonnaise and add it to 1 tablespoon of olive oil and mix them well. After applying the mask to your hair, keep it for half an hour on damp hair and wash it off.
6. Reduce Dandruff with Olive Oil and Lemon Juice
Dandruff is really really problematic for everyone. To have a natural anti-dandruff solution, try out a blend of olive oil and lemon juice. Some tablespoons of oil mixed with lemon and water can do the magic. All you need to do is to massage the mixture on damp hair for 20 minutes and wash the hair after that.
7. Promote Hair Growth by Infusing Garlic in Olive Oil
Garlic itself has a large number of benefits and imagine mixing Olive oil with garlic. This will do wonders. The mixture can make your scalp healthy and provide unlimited benefits to your hair. To have this wonderful mixture, Just put a few cloves of garlic in olive oil and leave them overnight or for some days. After that, you can use the oil.
Which Olive Oil is Best for Hair?
There are lots of options for olive oil that are available in the market. But, most people are not aware of which one they should use for maximum benefits. Some people even use cooking olive oil as hair oil. There is not any restriction on using cooking oil but you should prefer hair oil to have effective results.
To select the best olive oil for your hair, look for one that is unrefined and cold-pressed. Among extra-virgin oil, virgin oil, and pure olive oil, go for the extra virgin olive oil. It is because it has both the properties mentioned above along with organic components used in its production with no chemicals included.
On the other hand, Virgin oil has fewer anti-oxidant properties while pure olive oil might have heat-processing or refining involved in its production.
Conclusion
Hair loss, damage, and dandruff are inevitable these days. But olive oil can help you solve all these problems. It contains Oleic acid and squalane for hydration, Vitamin E and Oleuropein for hair growth, and Omega-3 fatty acids to reduce hair breakage.
Not only this, but it is also responsible for nourishment, keeping the scalp healthy and microbes free, reducing hair fall, and preventing split ends.
With all these benefits, it can also cause rashes, scalp irritation, and acne if not used properly.
So, we have also added some ways and the right amount you need to use for your hair. Just mixing the right amount of olive oil with honey, eggs, aloe vera or garlic, etc. can help you get the hair you always wanted.
