The Effects of Hard Water on Your Hair and Remedial Measures

Body: Water makes about 70% of human body and therefore type of water that is consumed impacts the overall body. Even the water used to was hair, which as a matter of fact does not require water directly for being healthy, affects the color, texture and its feel. Many of you must have experienced how water from different places behaves differently with your hair. Sometime, you might feel that even a little amount of shampoo is producing a lot of foam when at other occasions foams are almost non-existent. All these times it is not about the weather or the shampoo; rather, it is more about the type of water being used.

What is hard water?

The water that falls down with rain is the purest form of natural water. All other water is mixed with mineral and salts. However, if the amount of minerals dissolved in the water is limited then the water is said to be normal or soft water. This primarily happens if the rain water falls down and seeps below a hard rock and remains stored.

On the contrary, if the rain water seems through soft rock then the water dissolves minerals and salts of the rock, which ultimately lead to formation of hard water. In most of the cases, there is no harm in consuming hard water, provided the water is not excessively hard. In case you consume excessively hard water then it can upset your stomach and can also some other problems.

Effects on Hair

Damage due to Calcium, Magnesium and Iron: Hard water contains salts of magnesium and calcium along with high amount of iron. And when the same water is used to wash the hair then the soap or the shampoo does not work properly and produces low amount of foam. Further, the salts get deposited on the scalp layer and make it dry. The pores on the scalp are also clogged and it chokes the follicles. All the more, due to low foam formation, the hair remains dirty and several types of problems creep in.

Damage due to chlorine: Generally, the water that is supplied to households in metros and cities are treated with chlorine. Though the amount of chlorine is moderated as per volume of the water to be treated but due to prolonged usage of the chlorinated water the hair gets frizzy and dry. The chorine as a bleaching agent also makes the hair lose its natural hue and texture. However, it is unlikely that it makes the hair white, but it definitely makes the hair loss less black.

Remedial Measures:

It is a known fact that hard water is bad for your hair and even for your overall health and therefore it is best to treat the water and make it soft before using it. However, people only focus on treating the water that they are to drink or use in cooking and ignore the fact that their hair is also suffering from the hardness of water. So, as a remedy for the same, you can either use a filter fitted in the shower that turns the hard water into soft or use specialized shampoo that negate the effect of hard water. It is also advisable to use rain water to wash your hair as it is most pure form of natural water.