According to my dr, dandruff is just dandruff unless you need to go to the doctor- then it becomes Seborrhoeic Dermatitis- which does like to hang out behind the ears, as well as in the nose creases and the other bits mentioned upthread.
Keeping it well and truly washed can take care of minor cases.
I deliberately wash my whole ear because they seem to get awfully oil which doesn’t seem to go away with just the normal course of hair and face washing. I notice lots of little kids with a pretty heavy accumulation of crust and dry skin in the crease behind the ear, FWIW.
Even today, washing the hair each time a person bathes isn’t common in a number of cultures and ethnic groups. And not just the ones thought of as “third world”.
I always wondered about this too, until I saw some kid with potatoes sprouting back there. It was quite the crop!
I never washed behind my ears until one day I scratched the back of my ear good and smelled my fingers: an awful stench, similar to a sweaty ass crack! You’d think they get plenty clean from regular showers and washing one’s hair, but they don’t.
There’s lots of areas you should probably pay close attention to when washing, and don’t.
Between your toes is good, so you don’t get fungus growths.
Not just in the pits of your armpits, but the part behind it, towards the shoulder. This and the sides of the neck (mentioned upthread) can develop “skin tags” if not scrubbed well. The older you get, the more likely you are to get them.
Fronts and backs of both knees and elbows - I’ve seen people develop funguses (or somethin!) there, white stuff from not scrubbing every time.
Sides of nose, as mentioned earlier, and behind the ears are places you can get dandruffy skin peelin. Good regular scrubbing makes life better. You may not notice it, but if you aren’t scrubbing those areas, they’re prolly funkmeier.
You can tell how old I am <sigh>
In my day, in elementary school you got inspected monthly by the school nurse for head lice.
That is what this is about. It’s easy to forget about behind your ears and the nurse would come in and she’d look over your scalp. Since this was the early 70s, most of the haircuts where at least, ear length, most longer.
So it wasn’t catching any germs or anything like that, it was, the nurse would come in (and the days varied) and check and if you had any dirt behind your ears, the nurse would know your mother isn’t taking good care of you. It wasn’t that you could catch germs or anything. It was the fact someone would be looking behind your ears, so it better be clean.
So! That explains these things growing behind my ears.
Since this thread was adequately answered almost four years ago, I’m going to close it.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator