Everybody loves splashing in the pool every once in a while. It’s a favorite way to spend your summer and also a great physical activity that gets the heart pumping and the muscles working. However, major downsides to swimming with lower back pain are dry skin, dry hair, and red eyes, and there is one reason for that—chlorine.
While definitely annoying, chlorine is necessary for pool maintenance as it kills bacteria in the water. It helps prevent infections and diseases and generally keeps you safe while you’re doing your laps. Despite that, however, it is difficult to ignore the negative effects chlorine has on our body. We need to take extra precautions to prevent chlorine from affecting our body, skin, eyes, and hair too much by knowing what to do before and after pool time.
Want to know how chlorine affects the body and how to prevent bad effects? Then keep on reading the article!
1. It Can Lead to Dry Skin
According to Samer Jaber, M.D. of Washington Square Dermatology in New York City, chlorine irritates the skin by removing its natural oils. This then leaves the pores wide open and the epidermis vulnerable to dust, dirt, germs, and bacteria from the pool water, chlorine, and the air around you. That’s why you can feel your skin feeling quite rubbery or dry every time you get out of the pool.
The longer you stay in the pool, the scalier your skin will feel. So, it’s very important to take a shower right after you remove yourself from the pool. Use the gentlest body wash you can find, and make sure to not use any loofas or exfoliators as this can really aggravate the skin. Then, slather on some lotion or moisturizer to lock the moisture in and repair the damage.
If you can’t shower after your swimming session right away, you should rinse yourself thoroughly at the very least.
2. It Makes Your Hair Discolored and Dry
Did you know that chlorine is used to bleach clothing and paper? This bleaching effect can also affect your hair for the worst!
Aside from removing the natural oils from your skin, chlorine also removes natural oils from your hair, making them extremely dry. That’s why it’s notoriously hard to comb your hair—even with your fingers—after you step out of the pool. It feels like you need to physically wrangle your locks apart!
Of course, this dryness is damaging for your hair as it can cause breakage, scalp irritation, dryness, and more.
Additionally, chlorine indirectly causes a phenomenon that turns your hair green in the swimming pool! The real culprit of this is copper oxidation, which occurs simultaneously with chlorination. People who have light-colored hair or already-damaged hair are the likeliest to get green hair.
To prevent dryness as much as possible, you want to soak your hair thoroughly with clean water before entering the pool. This way, your hair has already absorbed as much as it can and won’t be absorbing more in the pool.
After leaving, you should wash your hair right away with a deep-cleansing shampoo. You want one that’s powerful enough to remove the chemicals after a few good scrubs. You should then follow this up with a conditioner to moisturize your tresses.
3. It Reddens and Irritates Your Eyes
This is the most obvious effect of chlorine on your body. Not only can others see your eyes being visibly red, but you can feel it too, whether you’re underwater or above!
Like your skin, your eyes have a protective barrier that coats your eyeballs and keeps them nice and moist. It also prevents dust, dirt, and germs from sticking to your eye—this is why you often tear up when something gets close to your eyes.
However, when you swim, chlorine strips this all away, leaving your eyes vulnerable to external stressors. Besides being bloodshot, your eyes will also become extremely itchy and sensitive to light for a few hours. You are also at risk of bacterial infection of the eye, the most common of which is pinkeye or conjunctivitis.
4. It Can Trigger Respiratory Conditions
You probably didn’t think your lungs could get affected by chlorine pool water, didn’t you? Or if you did, you probably thought it only affected your lungs by making you breathe harder and deeper when you swim.
Well, we’re here to tell you that that’s not the case at all! In fact, chlorine combines with sweat, dirt, and dead skin cells in the pool to create a chemical irritant called chloramines. They evaporate into the air and make their way into your lungs, causing a wealth of breathing problems especially if you’ve got underlying lung problems like asthma.
This gets worse when you’re at an indoor pool. Here, there is poor ventilation, and the air you’re breathing is likely recycled. You shouldn’t have many problems if the pool is an outdoor one.
Now, this doesn’t mean people with asthma can’t swim altogether. You just need to limit the amount of time you spend. You should also monitor signs of trouble like wheezing, coughing, and chest tightening. If possible, you should also have an inhaler on standby near the pool.
5. It May Worsen Skin Conditions
We already know that chlorine can dry out the skin, which means that it can potentially make existing skin conditions even worse too. It really depends on the person—oddly enough, while it might make your condition worse, it can alleviate some of the symptoms too!
For example, if you suffer from acne, chlorine might make it worse since it dries out the skin. This then leads to a buildup of dead skin cells that clog the pores and turn into whiteheads or blackheads. On the other hand, though, chlorine can actually kill the bacteria that cause acne.
The same applies to eczema, psoriasis, and any type of open wound or sore.
If you insist on swimming still, you should have a rinse before diving in. After getting out, shower right away with a mild cleanser and apply a moisturizer right after. This will prevent the skin from drying out and worsening your skin condition.
Conclusion
Despite the few negative effects it has, chlorine is essential if we want to keep safe in the pool. Thankfully, fighting the effects of chlorine is very much doable as long as we practice good habits before and after we play around in the pool.
