Hair Producing Peanut Butter ?!?

[Xx_Zz]

I have long, thick, extremely curly hair that's really rather stiff and abrasive (think almost like steel wool growing up out of my scalp). I'm prohibited from cutting it short, so it's about a foot and some long. Recently, my hair keeps randomly getting really really sticky in places, forming hard columns (bigger around than my finger) of sticky-glue-nasty, and tangling up and forming massive dreadlocks around said sticky places.

When I (finally) manage to brush to the center of the dreadlocks, there's this stuff in there that's sticky, and about the color and consistency of peanut butter (it has no odor). There's a lot of it and it's all over the place. It's impossible to brush out the sticky stuff, and brushing out the tangles does no good because the sticky stuff causes the hair to instantaneously tangle back into dreadlocks again.

The dreadlocks themselves are nearly impossible to brush out though, thanks to the stickiness -- I kid you not: my friend was helping me get it all untangled, and it was him pulling on the brush with both hands and his foot lodged in my back as he tried to make it come out. And that was working from the bottom up, a little bit at at time. The dreadlocks and stickiness are literally all the way up to my scalp, so simply cutting them out would leave me with massive bald spots (if not completely bald), and, as stated previously, I'm prohibited from cutting my hair short.

Even just running my hand on (since I can't get it through) my hair leaves this weird sticky residue on my hands, and scratching at my hair (not my scalp) causes the peanut buttery stuff to collect under my fingernails. My hair brush winds up completely coated in this stuff.

I've tried tons of different shampoos and stuff, thinking that that was the problem, but none of the changes help anything. The only thing I've found that will get this stuff out is Dawn Dish soap -- an entire bottle thereof -- and over two hours meticulously scrubbing it out. But here's the thing: I can get this all the way washed out, untangled, and completely free, and my hair will be back to being a tangled, sticky, peanut buttery mess within 12 hours or less.

I've not dyed my hair at all, and I don't particularly have a dandruff problem. How do I make this torment stop?

[Xx_Zz]

It turns out that I was apparently having a very nasty reaction to the intentionally over-chlorinated water in the pool for my swim class. I managed to cut out the worst of the icky peanut butter nastiness (friends of mine had spent 4+ hours helping me get it out of dreadlocks so that I wouldn't have to take all my hair off... we pulled out enough hair to rival the size of a small cat), and, after about 3 hours with Dawn dish soap, finally got the rest out. I persuaded the instructors to let me have a swim cap (since I'm required to take the swim class and thus can't weasel my way out of it), and it seems to have helped the issue quite a bit. Now I only get the peanut butter issue in the little bit of hair at the base of my neck that I can't quite manage to fit into the swim cap. I will be sooooo glad when that class is over.

[Bhupinder Kaur, MD]

Hello,
There is no medical condition as such which causes oiliness of the hair.I would suggest you to clean your hair frequently with a mild shampoo(you can use the ones for oily hair) and don’t apply any conditioner on the hair.Also you can shampoo twice during each wash and apply shampoo on the scalp without piling the hair on top.

It is very difficult to precisely confirm a diagnosis without examination and investigations and the answer is based on the medical information provided. For exact diagnosis, you are requested to consult your doctor. I sincerely hope that helps. Take care and please do keep me posted on how you are doing.