Hard Water Hair

Water truly produces more harm than good on the outside of the body, and the cause of the harmful effects of water can be summed in a single word: Oxidation.

Oxidation is the main explanation for why we wrinkle. Oxidation is the basic cause of most illnesses. Oxidation is the cause of skin cancer. Oxidation is the reason most of us will die.

Oxidation happens when excessive oxygen, in combination with oxidizing agents, begins a destructive journey that leads to the development of free radicals, causing an unbalancing of electrons and eventually harm to cells that were otherwise healthy and productive contributors to a well body. These injured cells can themselves become aggressors and form more free radicals.

Pure water can result in Oxidation when wet skin or hair experiences catalysts such as warm air, sunlight or direct heat. Of course, today`s water is almost never what we would call pure, and as a result of this, Oxidation is less the cause of the water itself, but rather of what is in the water.

The most potent oxidative agents come right out of the tap. Tap water is purposefully chock full of oxidizers including chlorine, chloramines and bromine.

Statistics on the quantity of these bacteria in tap water can be startling. For instance, because one hundred people died in Milwaukee from bacteria in drinking water years ago, it has become typical to discover over three times the chlorine in the city`s tap water than is legally required in swimming pools! You literally might be using �pool water� to wash your face and hair.

In addition, today`s water is high in minerals such as calcium, iron and copper � possibly beneficial inside the body, but potentially devastating to hair and skin. Just over 10 years ago, a study in Great Britain linked hard water with eczema. And in case you believe that does not damage you, more than ninty percent of Americans get hard water from the tap daily.

Knowing how hard your water is and how much chlorine it contains can encourage you to purchase hair and skin care treatments that will actually preserve your natural hair texture, color and shine as well as prevent or even reverse signs of aging on the skin. So what should you do?

Check Your Water. Do an easy chlorine test with OTO (orthotolodine) and get a hard water test strip to test for hardness. Simply buy the OTO at your local pool store and dispense 5-10 drops into a small glass of water to see if the water changes yellow. If it turns yellow, it contains enough chlorine to provoke oxidation.

Use antioxidant products that are of the proper form and percentage to have an impact. An active form antioxidant, such as fresh-dried ascorbic acid at 10 percent concentration or more, in fact stops oxidation on the hair, scalp and skin. Vitamin E, in a five percent concentration, is very effective on the skin to prevent oxidation from affecting lipids in and around skin cells.

Do you think you have a good antioxidant product? Don`t believe the hype; see for yourself. Your test kit will also test your antioxidant products to see whether they are neutralizing oxidative agents and thus are active. When you test your water and it becomes yellow from the chlorine oxidation, place a single drop of your favorite antioxidant serum or cream to the water. If it is truly an antioxidant, or if the antioxidant is still active, the color will go away like magic. If it doesn`t, the antioxidant is useless.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 10:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.