Sensitive Skin Reset: Shower Filters & Eczema: Supportive Sensitive Skin Beyond Cosmetic Benefits

It’s very common for people to invest in a shower filter for its cosmetic benefits – be it softer skin, shinier hair or even alleviating acne and other skin conditions. But that’s not where the benefits end. For those with eczema specifically, a shower filter can help to ease uncomfortable symptoms and impact wellbeing overall. In this guide, we’ll go through:

• What’s in shower water

• How unfiltered water worsens eczema

• How a shower filter can help improve symptoms

What’s In Your Shower Water?

If you suffer from eczema, it’s likely that you think very carefully about any and every product that you apply to your skin – from shower gels to soaps to body lotions and serums. Often, it’s about choosing the simplest products with the fewest irritants. 

The same thought and effort should be placed into what’s in your shower water. After all, most people shower once a day (if not more), which means that the skin is exposed to water frequently. This can have a significant effect on eczema symptoms and outbreaks. If your shower water is unfiltered, here’s what it likely contains:

• Hard Water Minerals: The most common hard water minerals in water are calcium and magnesium. You can usually tell if your shower water has a lot of hard water minerals by the presence of mineral build-up on and around your shower. 

• Disinfectants: Water contains disinfectants to clean it, such as chlorine and chloramine. 

• Heavy Metals: Heavy metals such as lead, copper, aluminum and mercury can be present in shower water, picked up from the pipes that the water moved through. 

• Bacteria: Shower water may even contain bacteria, often from the shower head (if it’s not cleaned regularly). 

Other contaminants may be present in the water, too. These include pesticides, microplastics and perhaps even pharmaceuticals. 

Unfiltered Water and Your Sensitive Skin

So how do these contaminants affect skin prone to eczema? Put simply, you wouldn’t use a body lotion that had ingredients such as chlorine, lead and bacteria, so why would you use water that contains these ingredients on your skin? To give you a clear idea of how important it is, here’s how unfiltered water affects your eczema. 

• Hard Water Minerals and Eczema: Hard water minerals damage the skin barrier and disrupt the natural pH balance of your skin, stripping it of natural oils and triggering inflammation, making eczema worse. 

• Heavy Metals and Eczema: The heavy metals in unfiltered shower water can cause allergic reactions that worsen eczema symptoms. People with eczema may actually have developed the skin condition because of an allergy to a heavy metal like copper or mercury. 

• Chlorine and Eczema: Chlorine massively dries out the skin and anyone with eczema will know that dry skin equals a higher chance of outbreaks. 

What to Expect After Using Filtered Shower Water

The good news is that there is a clear solution for people with eczema whose outbreaks are made worse by their contaminated shower water – a shower filter system. 

They are easy to install and work by eliminating all of the impurities present in shower water. Once you start using a shower filter, it’s likely that you’ll notice a significant reduction in eczema symptoms in just a few days. Things like redness, itchiness and inflammation will subside, making managing your symptoms much easier. 

While filtered shower water may not be a catch-all cure for eczema, it will certainly help in reducing symptoms. Then, you can focus on tackling your eczema with lotions and treatments that specifically target symptoms without worrying about your tap water hindering their effectiveness.