Every living cell in your body requires water to function at its best. Since you both drink and bathe in water, it’s important to know how the quality of your water affects you both internally and externally.
Staying Hydrated – A Primary Key to Good Health
Drinking enough water throughout the day is a huge factor in maintaining good health. If you are consistently in a state of mild dehydration, you can suffer from headaches, fatigue, irritability, and increase your chances of developing obesity, kidney problems, and other chronic diseases. Staying hydrated is one of the best ways to support your whole-body health. After all, 60% of your body is made up mostly of water!
Research shows that your skin health benefits from good hydration too. Good hydration is anti-aging, supports your skin’s elasticity and barrier functions, and is critical to skin tissue’s detoxification and repair capabilities.
But it’s not only about the quantity of water you drink, the quality of the water you drink can impact your health, too!
How Pure is Your Water?
The best water to drink is clean and pure water, free from harmful chemicals and germs. However, excess chemicals, pollutants, and minerals in the water you drink could be impacting your health negatively. In some areas of the country, unfiltered tap water can even have traces of hormones and pharmaceutical drugs that get into the water supply.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) offers an online tool that allows you to see how pure the public tap water is in your zip code. If your zip code results show that there are excess pollutants in your tap water, you should consider purchasing a water filter for the water you drink. Water filters range from filtered pitchers you can keep in the fridge, to faucet attachments, standalone gravity-filter urns, under-the-sink, and even whole-house units. There is a water filter for every budget. The EWG site also offers water filter information as part of your zip code search.
Filtering your water is better than purchasing bottled drinking water, as you’ll generate less plastic waste, save money, and avoid hormone disrupting chemicals and microplastics that can often be found in plastic water bottles.
Water Quality and Skin Health
We don’t just drink water, we come in contact with it several times each day. There are a number of ways that the quality of the water contacting your skin can affect your skin’s health:
Pollutants and Chemicals: Some people with skin conditions, such as eczema, TSW, psoriasis, or acne, can have skin reactions to the unfiltered tap water they wash in. If you’ve had difficulty with flare-ups and aren’t sure why, try washing with filtered water and see if it helps. Certain minerals in your tap water, such as iron, salts, or chemicals could be the culprit. Also, chemicals and minerals in your water could be disrupting your skin’s microbiome – the friendly bacteria that helps keep your skin healthy.
Water pH Level: Another factor in water that can soothe or irritate skin is its pH level. The pH level of water typically ranges from 6.5 to 8.5, with pure water having a neutral pH of 7. A pH below 6.5 has a high acidity and it means there could be potential contamination. A water pH above 8.5 may be alkaline. Both an acid or alkaline level that’s too high could be the reason why your tap water is irritating your skin.
Mineral Content: Water can also be “hard” or “soft.” Hard water has a higher mineral content that sometimes leaves a scaly residue on plumbing and appliances. However, hard water can also be harsh and drying to your skin, and be very irritating for those whose skin is sensitive. It can prevent soaps and detergents from lathering and rinsing away properly, leaving a residue behind on your skin that can cause problems. Softening your water may also help your skin feel better and retain its natural moisture, as well as helping your cleansing products work better and rinse away more completely.
Temperature: For certain skin conditions such as rosacea, eczema, and TSW, the temperature of your water could make your symptoms worse. For example, heat is a common trigger for rosacea. Since hot water is also very drying to the skin, it can exacerbate the pain and itching of skin lesions in cases of Eczema, TSW and rosacea. It’s always better to choose lukewarm or even cool water for bathing or showering when you’re experiencing a flare-up.
In addition to filtering your drinking water, you can also filter the water you bathe with. You can purchase showerhead filters, or a whole house filter that will purify all the water coming from every tap in your home.
(If you’ve tried filters, softeners, and other measures, and still think your skin is reacting to contact with water, talk to your skin health professional. Some patients with extremely sensitive skin can react to anything touching their skin, including water. Additionally, there is an extremely rare condition known as aquagenic urticaria, which causes red raised bumps whenever the affected patient touches water.)
Conclusion
Since proper hydration and cleansing is so important not only to healthy skin, but also to our internal system, it pays to consider the quality of the water we drink and wash with. Pure, clean water is one of nature’s simplest and best tools for health and well-being. We hope you’ll raise a glass of water with us. Cheers!
Want to Learn More About Skin Health?
Click HERE to get the Amethyst Holistic Skin Solutions Newsletter. You’ll receive interesting information about skin health via articles, before/after pictures, case studies of Amethyst patients, videos, interviews and more. Feel free to share this article with someone who you think may benefit.
About the Author
Olivia Hsu Friedman, LAc, Dipl.OM, DACM, Cert. TCMDerm, is the owner of Amethyst Holistic Skin Solutions and treats Acne, Eczema, Psoriasis, and TSW. Olivia treats patients via video conferencing using only herbal medicine. Olivia is Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Acupuncturists, serves on the Advisory Board of LearnSkin, and is a faculty member of the Chicago Integrative Eczema Group sponsored by the National Eczema Association.