Have you ever felt as if your skin and hair care regimen is not enough? You may be using top-of-the-line care products but still struggle with keeping your skin moisturized and your hair healthy. If you are wondering who the culprit is, you might want to check your water.
A lot of people think that water has nothing to do with how their hair and skin feel like. But did you know that hard water has a lot to do with it? In fact, having hard water does not only leave your kettles looking weird after boiling, it also leaves a huge impact on the quality of your skin and hair.
If you know very little about the differences between soft and hard water, this would be the perfect material to learn from. Who knows? This may be the information that can resolve some problems that you may have been wanting to solve.
What is Hard Water?
If you see a bit of scaly build-up on your faucets and kettles, notice soap not forming suds when you bathe and feel as if your hair and skin is not in its best state after bathing, you may have hard water flowing through your systems. The theory for hard water is that it passes through chalk and limestone, thereby leaving calcium and magnesium deposits. These minerals are responsible for making the water hard. On the other hand, soft water is free of minerals, thus, keeping it natural and safe.
What Hard Water Does to Your Skin
If you tried bathing with an attempt to form a mass of frothy white bubbles with your soap but ended unsuccessful, you may be bathing with hard water. Minerals such as Magnesium and Calcium found in hard water makes it hard to lather with soap or body gels. Washing it off may leave you with a sticky residue – soap scum.
Soap scum is not good for your skin as it clogs your pores and leads your skin to feel dry. When your pores are clogged, natural oils are left stuck causing breakouts and blemishes. This may be causing your long battle with zits and pimples.
In another note, having dry skin can lead to rash developments and worsening of existing skin problems like eczema. When moisture is eliminated from your skin, it leaves your skin feeling irritated, dry and itchy. Just imagine stripping off moisture and hindering natural oils from moisturizing your skin, this is what hard water does to your skin.
Hard water is known to build free radicals that cause harm and damage to skin cells that are healthy. This then leads to less firmer and healthier skin, hence, making your skin prone to aging faster. Using a water softening system can undo and prevent this from happening.
What Hard Water Does to Your Hair
If you noticed your hair becoming flatter than usual, then you may be washing it with hard water. The dissolved minerals that come with hard water causes your hair to be flat, less pliant and hard to style. So if you have shifted from one hair product to another and are still getting the same hair texture and quality, you can learn about water softening systems.
Another problem caused by hard water is that it contributes fading to color-treated hair. A beautifully dyed hair can transform to another hue with the ion deposits working on your strands. Imagine ending up with a faded, rough and flat textured hair.
Those who have been bathing with hard water may experience scalp drying. The minerals found in hard water can cause scalp drying and scaling. When this happens, you will notice flakes starting to build up and your scalp become more irritated than ever.
Whether you believe it or not, hard water can actually leave your hair looking oily and dry at the same time. Prolonged washing with this type of water can wear away the hair’s elasticity, making it look dehydrated and flat.
Experts recommend using scalp masks to lessen the damage. This can be done on a weekly basis to slowly remove the traces of minerals that built up from washing with hard water. Checking out water softening systems can also work as this does not just lessen the damage, it reverses it and prevents it from re-occurring.
Conclusion
Small details such as the type of water you use to wash your hair and skin can cause a huge impact on its quality. You may have been doing it for the longest time and have gotten used to its results. But do you ever wonder how it would be like if you did not use hard water to bathe or wash your skin and hair? Hard water causes drying, scaling and damage to both the skin and hair. It takes away moisture, flexibility, and youth at a gradual pace. Why let this happen? There are a lot of ways to soften water and most of them are readily available in the market. If you have been settling with the results you get from hard water, now is the time to make a change.