What’s Really in Your Water—and How It’s Affecting Your Hair and Skin

Could your shower water be one of the hidden reasons behind thinning hair, breakage, or dull skin? ✨

Most people focus on supplements, hormones, or expensive products — but rarely think about the water they’re exposed to every single day.

Drop a 💧 if you’ve never considered how water quality could affect your hair and skin.

I used to assume hair changes were just part of aging or hormones… until I started looking at what was actually coming out of my showerhead. Hard water minerals, chlorine, and even heavy metals can build up over time, leaving hair dry, brittle, harder to grow, and scalp health compromised — even when you’re doing everything else “right.”

Once I switched to filtered shower water, I noticed a major difference not only in my hair but also in my skin. Sometimes the smallest changes can make the biggest impact.

And this goes beyond beauty — reducing daily toxin exposure matters for overall wellness too.

If you’ve been struggling with hair growth, dryness, irritation, or unexplained changes, your water may be worth looking into.

What’s one wellness swap that made a noticeable difference for you?

👇 Share below!

Link to my filter: https://www.filterbaby.com/drheck

Link to EWG: https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/

About this Podcast 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome. So on today's podcast, what I wanted to discuss with you is how your shower could be sabotaging your hair. So a couple of things that uh for me, I'm always learning. And uh throughout this health journey, right? And me being in the field for 20 years, every day I still learn something new. So for my health journey, what I noticed about my hair growth, you guys know I've Hashimoto's, which is of course an autoimmune of the thyroid. So that can definitely affect my hair, my skin, my nails, and all of that. But after my third, who is now 18 months, I was taking neutrophil and my hair still wasn't growing. So I stopped taking neutrophil. And then what they offered is a hair analysis, which we'll get to. And that was really enlightening. So something that came up, and I'm like, I'm sure most of my patients and my listeners know nothing about this. So let's do a deep dive all about water, especially the shower water, and your hair health and just really your health in general. So today we're talking about something that I think is wildly overlooked when it comes to hair health. And honestly, most of us just don't even think about it. We think about filtering our water that we're drinking, cooking with, we're being conscious of what we're putting on our skin, what food we're getting, but we're neglecting our shower filters, right? Or maybe we don't have shower filters. And let's just talk about water in general. So let me ask you this have you ever felt that you're doing something right? As I just said, you're using cleaning products, you're eating well, taking supplements, and yet your hair just isn't growing. It might be thinning, it might be brittle, it might be dry. And of course, you know, I feel especially as a woman, we just chalk it up to I'm over 30, or I'm in uh my 40s, or I'm perimenopause, or I'm menopause, or I'm postmenopause. There's always an excuse, right? So if the issue necessarily isn't your shampoo or your nutrition, or your you've maybe had your labs worked up and they're beautiful, let's talk about what's coming out of your shower. Because the reality is our tap water contains a mix of minerals and trace metals that, while safe, can still impact your hair and scalp over time. And what I want to show you guys today, too, is a tool that I use a lot of time academically with my students teaching them about looking up your clean products and the scarier thing, looking up what's in your water. And I will warn you, I'll give you a disclaimer now, you don't know what you don't know, but once you know, you can never look back. So I'm just warning you, once you know, you'll never be the same. So let's break this down a little bit. So, first, what we have is called hard water. And that water contains high levels of minerals, primarily calcium and magnesium. And while those minerals aren't harmful to drink, they can actually build up your hair on your hair. You know, I grew up having hard water uh at home in Northeast Ohio. We had a well. Um, and of course, we didn't filter it because we didn't know that in the 80s and 90s. One of the biggest things to think about with well water, especially, is filtering out runoff. So you don't want those glyphosphates, you don't want all of those nasty chemicals that they put on crops. So if you have well water especially, you need to filter it. And that's a topic for a different day. But getting back to hard water. Over time, this creates almost like a film over that hair shaft. And what it does is it basically blocks moisture from getting into the hair. So your hair ends up feeling dry, dull, prone to breakage, no matter what you do, no matter what you're eating, what you're putting on it. So if your hair is constantly breaking, it's going to feel like it's not growing, even if it technically is. So then again, building on that, depending on where you live, the water can contain things like chlorine and even trace amounts of heavy metals like arsenic and lead. And again, these are usually in really, really small amounts, but here's the key chronic exposure. So in health, we always notice that we feel great in our 20s. Always, most of the time, we feel great in our 20s, 30s, little aches and pain starting. And then 40s, you're like, man, middle age is really kicking my butt, right? It's not necessarily that, it's the buildup. We get more miles on our body, we get more chronic exposures. And over time, those small amounts of exposures build up. And so then if you add stress and other factors involved in our health, that can be really the trigger. So basically, you're showering in this water every single day, right? And maybe you take one shower a day, maybe you take two or three. I don't know. It's all exposure, right? And so what this can do is basically start to disrupt your scalp. And yes, it can clog your hair follicles, it can create irritation and basically throw off the natural balance of your scalp. So over time, that can absolutely impact your hair growth. And so then there's also something what we call in nutrition as oxidative stress. And you've probably heard this term before. So certain metals can actually contribute to uh free radical damage, which can affect the hair follicle itself, which is actually the place where your hair is growing from. So now you're not just dealing with dry hair, you're potentially affecting the actual hair growth cycle of your hair. And speaking of that, your hair grows in cycles, right? And we especially know that uh with pregnancy, it stops growing for a little bit. And then about like three months postpartum, it seems like it all falls out. Well, that's just keep catching up for lost time, basically, right? Because your hair doesn't grow. Here it doesn't fall out, and then postnatally after a couple months, it starts to fall out. So getting back to the hair growth cycle, right? There's a growth phase, a transition phase, and basically a shedding phase. So when your scalp is stressed or inflamed, more hairs can get pushed into that shedding phase sooner than they should. And so you you might start to notice more hair in the shower, more hair in your brush, just overall thinning, right? It's just not as thick and voluptuous as it once was. So, what you might start to notice is that with that thinning, one of the biggest clues that your water might be playing the role is if your hair feels better when you travel. And I've had this happen all the time when patients, especially like nutrition, they go somewhere else, like Europe, and they eat gluten, they eat the bread, they drink the wine, and they're like, hey, Dr. Heather, you know what? I had no headaches when I woke up in uh Italy or Ireland or wherever. It matters what's in it, right? It's the quality. They don't have the glyphosphates, they're cleaner. Uh, it's just, it's just a different animal when you're over there. So if you've noticed this, especially with your water, when you travel, that actually it's not as bad. It gets better. That's a big sign right there. So if you've ever gone gone somewhere and thought, oh, my hair looks so great, maybe it's just because I'm on vacation, maybe it's because I'm not stressed, and then you get back home and it's like back to dry, unmanageable. That's usually a big sign that your water's a factor. So then what can you do about this, right? One of the simplest and most effective things is filtering your shower water. And I will show a link uh with a shower filter that I did a lot of research on, and I absolutely love. I have one in my kiddo's um bathroom, and then I have one in our main bath, and it's amazing. And you can see my hair is back to normal. And it just took, gosh, I think I've had that shower filter in since January, maybe December, and it's just made huge differences. And I've even cut my hair to kind of get a fresh start. So a good shower filter can reduce things like chlorine, sediment, and some of these metals. So you're not constantly hitting your hair and scalp with them, right? This is something I personally use and I've noticed a huge difference. And even in my skin, I feel like my skin's brighter, it's not as dry. And we all know, especially in the Midwest, this was a really hard winter. I haven't had the cracked, chapped bleeding hands that I normally do. My lips are much better. So, of course, if you're curious about the shower filter, I'll link the exact one I use in the show notes so you can check it out. And it's a really simple switch. All you do is you take your shower head off, you put the filter on, you put your shower head back on, done. You run it a little bit just to get it going, and you're good to go. The other thing you could always do is to further support your hair, use a clarifying or uh chelating shampoo once a week just to remove that mineral buildup. And of course, if you're curious about testing your hair, for me, you guys know I'm research-based. So if I can know the exact issue and see what's happening and then do an intervention and then recheck, I'm gonna do that. So I'll link in my show notes also um neutral. And again, you can always do uh the hair testing through them. And there's lots of other companies as well. If you're a patient of mine, I can always order hair testing. A different topic for a different day, but we always uh check hair metals in kids with autism and ADD, ADHD as well, because that really um gives insight to their overall health, especially their neurological health. So we talked about the filter, we talked about chelating shampoo or clarifying shampoo. Something also you can do super, super simple, is use an apple cider vinegar rinse just to break down that residue, help restore shine. Um, and then of course, let's talk about nutrition, because you guys know I'm all about nutrition, right? Let's talk about the nutrients for hair growth. So there's lots of studies done where if you're low in zinc, you're more apt to prematurely gray, right? And I've found a couple of um sparkles in my hair lately, now that I'm in my 40s. So you can bet your bottom dollar on making sure I'm taking zinc just because not that I don't want to age gracefully, but if I can avoid going gray, I'm gonna try to avoid going gray. So things like zinc, which we just talked about, protein, protein's huge. As women, especially, I feel like we don't get enough protein. The rule of thumb used to be 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. I like to aim even higher at like one to 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight, just depending on how active you are. Biotin silica, horse tail is a great herb to help with natural silica. So if you like tea, you could always do that. But silica is one of my favorites. And so the key point is with this, if you notice changes in your hair, you can be doing everything right, but internally, but then externally, maybe you're not doing everything right. So the water is a big part of that environment, and it can not only cause hair loss, but hair issues in general. And then the other things just to consider because you guys know that I like to do a comprehensive approach, get your hormones checked. I can't tell you how many times my patients get their thyroid checked and it's just TSH, or it's just T3. You really need to get TSH, T3, T4. If you have a history of Hashimoto's or autoimmune in the family, get your antibodies, TPOAB, T G A B. Again, if you're a patient of mine, I can always order those for you, but you can always ask your primary too. Thyroid is a big component of that stress, right? You guys know I like to get functional labs tested. So cortisol is a great thing to get checked just to know where you're at. Function health, that's the labs that I really prefer just because they're cost effective and they give you a great overview of where you're at from your biological age to cortisol to your hunger and satiety hormones to your sex hormones, you name it, they cover it. They check how well you're methylating your bees, they check your D levels, they check everything that I would want as a practitioner. Um, and then, of course, nutrient deficiencies. They also check zinc. So that's for me one. Uh, if you saw my episode on going over my function health results, I was low in zinc. I think I get enough zinc in my diet, but apparently I don't. So that's something, especially now that I found a couple little sparkles in my hair, that's something that I definitely take every day. 30 to 50 is the right dose, just depending on how deficient you are. So you definitely have to take it with food because zinc will make you nauseous if you don't. So again, the water filters, I feel like that's something that's easily missed. And so then I just wanted to take a few moments and give you guys an overview of my hair results. So let's talk about this here. You guys know I'm an open book. So here is my hair mineral analysis. Uh, this was actually done in November. So again, I started doing the filters um December, January. So when I met with the physician to go over the results, she said basically I'm doing everything right nutritionally. And then she asked if I filter my water. I'm like, no, I don't filter my water. Why would I filter my water, right? I should know better. So mercury was beautiful, lead, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum. You can see my barium is way high. So we'll talk about that here in a few minutes. Nutritional elements. So boron, stronium, calcium, and magnesium. And then electrolytes looked great. My cofactors looked great. You can see my copper was a little bit in that middle range. So I want to keep an eye on that. But everything looked great. No crazy toxic elements detected, no real like lithium or tin. And of course, medications. We didn't talk about medications, but of course, medications can always affect hair growth. So that's what the hair mineral analysis can show you. A beautiful breakdown of all those elements. Let me talk a little bit more about basically what that kind of gets broken down as, right? So barium, barium can be falsely elevated a little bit with elevations in cadmium, magnesium. So again, this is environmental exposures. So if we're near, you know, if we're we've had a lot of imaging studies like contrast with that, industrial practices, transportations if you live in a city, other lifestyle factors. So high calcium, high magnesium, and high strontium can indicate hard mineral shower water or permed or bleached hair. You guys see my hair is not permed, it's not bleached. Definitely the water quality, right? So uh again, just to kind of give you a little bit more insight, barium basically again comes from air pollution, coal, oil, gasoline. If you live in a city, you're gonna probably be pretty exposed to that. So, what you can do, how do I support that, right? Liver-supporting foods, yeah? So those beautiful cruciferous vegetables to help balance estrogen and support the detoxification pathway. We know with most things, water's critical. And of course, water with appropriate electrolytes in it. So then the other component is looking at sleep and stress support, right? We talked about supporting the liver and supporting detoxification pathways. Sleep is also a critical component with that, which we kind of don't think about a lot with hair health. So, using, you know, doing breath work, doing head space, doing, you know, music therapy, you can do white noise, yoga, tai chi, qigong, all of those can really help just to support you a little bit more. And of course, kind of getting back to nutrition, just eating the rainbow. Okay. So if you're curious, and I will warn you, once you know, you can't unknow. If you're curious, um, there's a resource called the environmental working group, right? So you can look up the dirty dozen, the clean 15. You can look up your beauty products and see how toxic they are, which again will can affect skin and hair and toxicity. So, for example, if you want to look up um the skin deep database, say you use, oh, and there's some pop-ups here. Say you use Bath and Body Works, right? Classic endocrine disruptors from the news. I think we've all been there. Or um Victoria's Secrets. Okay, so let's just look. Let's do Beach Nights at Body Mist. Okay. Five, right? Fairly toxic. And it shows you the ingredient concerns, what they can contribute to, all the ingredient scores. So fragrance, we know that's huge with like allergies, it's an endocrine disruptor, um, can affect fertility, all of that. Here's some other clean ones, and then here's some good to fair. So if you look this up and it says it's pretty toxic, right? And if you want to search for a cleaner body spray, if you click on body sprays, here's some different ones that are verified by the EWG that are clean. So a couple little hacks with that just to kind of um optimize. You know, there's always good, better, and best with your health. You can always look up food scores, um, look up cleaning products, which we've talked about before on the podcast. Let's go back. I want to go back to the homepage because I want to show you guys the um tap water. Okay. So I'm gonna give you guys an example. Tap water database. So you'll go to that. Know what's in your tap water, just in case you're curious. So I'm gonna put in my zip code, which is Finley, Ohio, right? Here you go, Finlay City, Finley, Ohio. About 54,000 people serve. Hancock County, right? Yep, that's me. Gotta click on that. So it gives you, and this is from let's see when this was last updated. Looks like 2024 through June of 2024. So it's probably due to be updated again. But we have 10 contaminants that exceed the EWG's health guidelines. Now, again, this is different from the government recommendations, but we know maybe they might not have our best interest in mind at all times. I'm just saying. So if you're curious how much more above the recommended amount they are, you can look at them. And so, like, for example, I've had a lot of patients, a lot of patients from Carey, Ohio, which is not too far away, very rural, have cancer and deadly cancer. I've had a couple patients pass away from it. It seems that there's something environmental going on. I don't know what it is. I don't know if anyone's looked into it, but I'd just be curious. I haven't looked up their water, but I'd just be curious, right? Because we know it's a very heavy farming community. So just Finley City water, right? Bromodichloral methane. Let's look into that real quick. Here you go. It has 12.2 parts per billion. It's way double what the national average is, and even above the state average, what the EWG recommends. And again, the US recommendations for health are even a lot different from Europe's recommendations. We've known that for years with food quality and standards. So here's the health risks. Let me go down. So health risks, cancer, harm to fetal growth and development, right? Um, if I go to chloroform, we've all heard of chloroform before. Uh, we're at 38.5 parts per billion. National average, again, we're over double what the national average is, and we're definitely pretty much double what the state average is. And then here again, cancer and then fetal growth and development. So the recommended is 0.4. So just again, one more reason to filter your water in general, especially your shower water, especially if the kids, if your kids are like mine and you tell them don't drink the bathwater and they drink the bathwater, very, very important. If you're filtering their water to drink out of in sippy cups or Stanley's or whatever you're using, why wouldn't you filter the bathwater and the shower water? So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. It's something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. I'll post um in the show notes the shower filter that I use. I'll also post a link to the EWG so you can go down some rabbit holes. So I hope you enjoy this. And of course, if you guys have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. If there's future topics that you're curious, please send me a DM or email me what you would like to uh learn about. And uh I'll make sure that we cover that on a future podcast.