Leading a healthy lifestyle is important to me. I workout, I make nutritious food choices (most days), and I try to choose products that are clean, all-natural, or at least not filled with tons of scary chemicals that cause way more harm than good.
I also like to surround myself with like-minded people because I find that when you all share similar goals, it makes those goals way more achievable on a regular basis. Sure, we go out for the weekend chips and margs, but we always motivate each other to keep up with our routines and keep healthy living a priority.
Recently, one of my friends started to notice weird changes in her hair and skin. For someone who is probably even healthier than I am, we were both shocked and super confused. She was working out regularly and focused on a non-processed diet, yet her hair was starting to fall out and her skin was covered in splotchy, dry rashes. It was honestly terrifying.
We really had no idea where this was coming from, until she discovered that it had to do with her tap water. It hit us like a ton of bricks: the same water that we drink is the same water that we shower in, but why do we only worry about filtering our drinking water? Our skin is the largest and most absorbent organ on our body, so why aren’t we showering as responsibly as we drink?
My friend took a free online water report to figure out what was actually in her local water supply, and she was blown away. The chemicals that were found caused dry scalp, hair loss, chronic dry skin and rashes. All of this…from her shower?? Luckily she was able to find the source of the problem to get to a solution, but this information really surprised me.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how diligent you are about your workout routine and your diet, the quality of your water has a huge impact on your wellbeing and the effectiveness of the products or routines that you invest in. And something as seemingly healthy like daily showers was causing serious health issues.
After learning the effects of my friend’s unclean shower water, I decided I needed to do the research on my own and stop living in denial. I used the free water report that she found, plugged in my zip code, and discovered the facts. My local water sources have arsenic, nitrate and nitrite, chromium (hexavalent), radium, and 1,4-dioxane. I wasn’t even sure what those names were, but I was terrified.
With a little further digging, I learned that long term exposure of arsenic can eventually cause cancer and other diseases, nitrates are a product of animal and human waste decomposition, chromium is a chemical used in industrial products that can cause skin reactions, 1 in 10,000 people would develop cancer over a lifetime caused by radium, and 1,4-dioxane is another potential cancer-causer found in groundwater throughout the United States.
Even worse than my friends hair and skin problems? The toxins and chemicals in my own shower water were likely to cause cancer. No amount of push-ups or salads was going to fix that.
All tap water across the country must meet the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations. Although the US water supplies are considered to be among the safest in the world, more and more contamination is occurring on a rapid basis – which was the cause of my friend’s troubles.
Even though our water is technically regulated, it’s not as regulated as we think. So many of the standards set by the EPA are decades old, and with growing contamination and pollution, those standards are no longer safe for us anymore. The metals, toxic minerals and dangerous chemicals so often found in shower water are causes of issues like damaged or thinning hair, skin redness and irritation, pimples, warts, and even damaged nervous system, liver, kidneys, and cancer.
Although all of these new details definitely freaked me out, I was grateful to have found the truth. No more time wasted showering in toxic shower water, it was time for a solution.
If you’re ready to find out what chemicals you’ve been bathing in all along, take this free water report so you can find a solution too.
