How Tap Water is Damaging Your Hair, Skin, and Nails?
Dermatologists and other experts have always mentioned water to be the best solution for healthy skin and hair. Drinking a good amount of water and cleaning your skin and hair with water regularly keeps them healthy and beautiful.
Ever thought the same water could damage your skin, hair, and nails?
Yes, the chemically treated or the hard water from the tap can be quite damaging for your hair, skin, and nails.
Let’s learn how.
What’s the Cause of Worry in Your Tap Water?
What do you do when you need to clean your face, or you need to wash your hair? Of course, you run your tap for the purpose. But while you are using tap water to wash your skin and hair, it might be damaging them.
You must have read a lot of news reports about how unsafe the water being supplied to your home is for drinking.
But do you know this water can also potentially damage your hair, skin, and nails?
This is because, before reaching your tap, the water is treated with common disinfectant chemicals like Chlorine and Fluoride.
Let’s learn about two major things in your tap water that are being harsh on your soft skin and bouncy hair.
Chlorine
The primary sources of tap water in India are river water, groundwater, or water from big reservoirs.
This water often contains several impurities like dirt and bacteria.
So, municipal corporations and other water-supplying companies treat the water using chlorine to get rid of bacteria.
Chlorine makes the water drinkable by getting rid of life-threatening micro-organic impurities like bacteria and viruses. But the same chlorine can also take a toll on your skin and hair. The chemical rips off the natural oils that cover your skin and hair and damages them.
Check out this post, if you would like to learn more about how to remove chlorine from water.
Click to read: Can Gravity-Based Purifier Remove Chlorine?
Hard Water
Apart from chlorine and fluoride, sometimes the tap water being supplied to your home can be hard water.
Hard water is water that contains a high mineral content. The two main constituents of hard water are Calcium and Magnesium. But it may also consist of other naturally found minerals such as iron, copper, zinc, and others.
Minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, and copper, are considered good for health, but they can damage your hair, skin, and nails.
The easiest way to find out if the tap water at your home is hard or not is to look at your bath fittings. Hard white stone-like residue on your bath fittings is a clear sign of hard water.
Not sure how?
Let’s learn more about how chlorine and hard water can be so damaging.
How Does Tap Water Affect Your Skin?
The most noticeable impact of hard water is on your skin. Here are some of the common bad effects that hard water can have on your skin.
Dry and Flaky Skin
Hard water has a high amount of minerals such as calcium that do not dissolve soap well. As a result, while washing your face or bathing, the soap residue may stay on your skin. This makes your skin dry and flaky.
Premature Aging
Similar to calcium, chlorine in hard water also has a devastating impact on your skin. It leads to faster aging of your skin.
Chlorine can be quite harsh on your skin. It strips away the natural oils, which keep your skin soft and protect it from harsh weather and pollution. In the absence of natural oils, your skin tends to dry up and crack, which results in the formation of wrinkles and fine lines.
If you are facing symptoms of fine lines and wrinkles on your skin much earlier than your age, then the Chlorine water coming from your house tap can be one of the reasons.
Chlorine Also Kills Good Bacteria
Most of the municipal corporations and water supply agencies in India add chlorine to water before it reaches your tap. This is done to purify the water from bacteria and other pollutants.
But along with the harmful bacteria, chlorine at times also kills the good bacteria that are good for your gut and skin. The microbes in your gut are good for digestion and impact the health of your skin. Similarly, the microbes on your skin are good for the health of the skin. The health of your skin can deteriorate in the absence of good bacteria at times.
Some studies also suggest that Chlorine water may also break up vitamin E, a friend of healthy skin.
Chlorine Might Increase Cancer Risks
Some experts have also associated chlorine with cancer. Whether you are drinking the chlorinated water or using it to clean your skin and hair, it can cause cancer instances.
Some reports suggest that people who are more exposed to chlorinated water have a high risk of colorectal cancers.
Though the evidence of chlorine causing cancer is not much, many experts have shown their support for the possibility of chlorine causing cancer.
How Does Tap Water Affect Your Hair?
Apart from skin, chlorine, and hard water also cause noticeable damage to your hair. If you stay at a location where the TDS level of the water is quite high, you will notice how the water is impacting your hair health, too, along with the skin.
Loss of Shine and Flexibility
The presence of chlorine in water removes the necessary oil from your hair. This makes the hair cuticles dry and takes away the natural shine of the hair. It not only removes the shine of the hair, but it will also make the hair brittle.
Did you notice your hair on the bathroom floor, each time you leave the shower? Don’t curse your new expensive shampoo; the actual villain is the hard or chlorinated water coming out from the tap.
Split Ends and Damaged Strands
Chlorine and other chemicals can also damage the fiber of the hair. When you have damaged strands, there are higher chances of getting split ends in your hair.
Hard water minerals like calcium can also result in split ends and damaged hair. The sticky nature of calcium makes it very hard to get rid of. The hard water minerals cause extreme dryness and roughness resulting in split ends.
How Does Tap Water Affect Your Nails?
The basic product of your nails is keratin. Several layers of keratin join together, to form a hard nail bed. However, the minerals in the hard water react with the keratin and may weaken the layered bed. Due to this reason, you may face several troubles and symptoms such as:
- Brittle nails
- Thinning of the nails
- Discoloration of the nails
Now, if you go for a manicure in such a situation, your nails can get damaged and broken. So, if you wish to get back the shine and growth of your nails, you need to get rid of hard water.
How Can You Minimize the Damage?
It is not always possible to change your location just to get away from hard water. Instead, you can make certain changes in your life to minimize the damage.
- Use a tap or shower filter to keep away from harmful chemicals like Chlorine that might damage your skin, hair, and nails.
- Install a hard water softener at home so that you can get soft water throughout all the taps in the house.
- Limit your shower time so that you can minimize exposure to hard water.
- Start using a conditioning mask for your hair to offer it the right nourishment that the hard water may have stripped out.
- Use a good moisturizer for your skin and nails as soon as you come out of the shower.
- Make a habit of wearing clear nail paint always to protect your nails from being brittle.
Wrapping Up
Hard water is harmful to drinking and is harmful to your skin, hair, and nails. Regular exposure to hard water can lead to damage to your skin, hair, and nails by making them brittle, dry, and unattractive. Taking preventive steps in such a case is the only way that can keep you safe from such damage.
