Hard water
Ok someone correct me if i’m way off base here, but
i was thinking we all know that hard water reacts with
soap and leaves a sticky film,"soap curd" on your skin.
and each time you wash your face you get more of this
crap building up on your skin, that doesn’t rinse away.
well what is soap, but a fat…tallow…well if you
have oily skin..like most of us do..that "fat" on our
skin could be reacting with the hard water making that
crud that we have to scrap off, even if you are not using
any soap…the hard water and oil on your face creates this
crap…..Could soft water really do the trick here?..I’m
starting to think yes…many people have posted saying they
cleared up very nicely when they washed in soft water when on
vacation or at someone elses home and
returned to there crapy skin once they went back to there
hard water.
Anyone want to chime in?
August 29th, 2004 at 1:41 pm
I for one have had great results with soft water. I dont like to travel because most places have hard water. The problem for me is not the soap. I stopped washing my face with soap a year ago and just use plain water. This also has done wonders for my skin. I havent had a sebderm outbreak in a long time, but the flakes are still there, but not nearly as bad as it was. It could different for you though…
August 31st, 2004 at 12:59 am
Soap is fat that has been chemically reacted with a strong base (lye),
releasing glycerin in the process and turning the fats into sodium or
potassium stearate. It is the single aton of sodium or potassium
on the end of the oily stearate group that makes soap dissolve in
water.
When soap contacts hard water, the sodium or potassium in the soap
(that it got from the lye) is exchanged with calcium or magnesium
(from the hard water dissoved carbonates). Since each calcium or
magnesium atoms can bond to two stearate groups, they link the soluble
single stearates (with a metal on the end) into into an insoluble waxy
calcium or magnesium double stearates (with the metal in the middle).
Since the oils from your skin do not have the sodium or potassium part
that soap has, it cannot react with hard water this way.
If you have hard water, I suggest that you try washing with a minimum
amount of diluted dishwashing detergent for a week or so, and see if
eliminating the stearate coating has any effect.
You may be surprised how much rinsing is required to remove all the
detergent, compared to the feel of soap that was converting to waxy
stearate instead of rinsing off.