It can be extremely annoying when dry skin just doesn’t seem to want to go away. Even more annoying is when you can’t figure out why. Your skin seems to be unable to retain moisture, even with the amount of pampering you give it.
You wash carefully, put on a lot of moisturizer, and it still feels tight, looks flaky, and refuses to go smooth. So what’s the deal? Is there a hidden factor that you are missing?
It is very likely that you are. Many people take their regular shower, go through their regular facial routine, use their specific products, and never consider the one and greatest thing that they constantly put on their skin.
your water
Many people don’t even know what kind of water they have. Others didn’t even know they had a water type. However, most people have a type of water that they would like to explore. In your case of continually dry skin, you’ll definitely want to find out.
In fact, there are two different types of water; hard and soft. If you find that your skin is still dry even after all the work you’ve put into it, the problem may lie in the fact that you have hard water and it’s helping to keep your skin dry.
Water that is considered hard means that the water contains a large amount of calcium, magnesium, and iron deposits. If you notice that your shower or tub is slowly but steadily building up deposits like rust, soap scum, and limescale, you probably have hard water.
Not only will you be cleaning your tub more often and possibly dealing with clogs in your pipes, but you’ll also have skin that’s less likely to be soft.
Hard water makes it more difficult for substances to dissolve efficiently in it, such as soap. When you then (which you may also realize is hard to do) and then rinse, you may not be removing all of the soap from your skin.
This is not your fault, but rather the inability of the water to wash all the soap off your skin. The soap that stays on the skin helps to dry it out, leaving it with itchy, flaky skin. The leftover soap can also help to clog your pores, giving you dry skin and some additional skin irritations.
Because both hard water deposits and cleaning products remain on the skin, they can also cause the skin to become more irritated and more susceptible to damage, especially when it comes to facial skin and the fragile blood vessels that are below. Hard water can even thin your skin and aggravate skin conditions like rosacea.
Washing with hard water means that even with good products meant to help your dry skin, you still have to fight to get your skin into the condition you want.
If you have well water, you can easily get a water softener to help prevent hard water.
Soft water means there are fewer deposits in the water, giving your soap better lathering power and making it much easier to wash off, ridding your skin of excess soap after towel drying and giving you better opportunity to have softer and more hydrated skin.
However, many people obtain their water through public means. If it does then if your water is not yet soft then you may have a bigger problem trying to get soft water.
Yes, there is not much you can do to remedy the water coming out of your faucets unless you want to opt to have a major installation of a water softening unit. If you can’t do this, you’ll have to learn to live with your hard water by using less soap and taking shorter showers, which will give you less access to your skin.
You could buy water to use on your face to help prevent your skin from dealing with hard water and continue using your current skin products.
Even if you can’t do anything about hard water, at least now you can have peace of mind knowing that your water was the final piece of the puzzle in your dry skin.
