Chlorine-Time to get rid of it and here’s why and how.

Chlorine is used as a common municipal water cleaning agent, among many others. Its been used for eons and is quite safe, for the most.

But nature never intended the human body to consume chlorine in large and regular measures.

When we drink water directly from the tap, we ingest the chlorine. When we go swimming in the pool, our hair gets coated with the chemical. Shower water releases so much chlorine that enters your airways.

The natural question that arises is what happens when chlorine remains in the water we interact with. I will talk of primarily three areas of impact in this article. There are many more but lets focus on these as a start.

1. Your gorgeous tresses falling off into the drain or greying too early- Whether you prefer long hair or the short crop, whether you are male, or female-our crowning glory of hair is important to us. Chlorine has the side effect of making our hair dry and brittle. In addition, if you have undergone hair treatments and have used hair colourant dyes, this increases the damage of dry and brittle hair to dry, brittle AND porous hair.

Once porous, hair absorbs more copper and other chemicals. This leads to faster discoloration and those early white strands.

The number of people who complain of hair fall or greying strands, too early in life- part of the reason is chlorine in the water with which you wash your hair and shower. And funnily enough, the longer you shower, the more chlorine you take on. (Note the sneaky pitch for shorter showers and water conservation 😊. I take full marks for sneaking pet peeves into every conversation.)           

2. Those red dracula eyes- You or your kid go for a nice swim and come out looking like Dracula with red eyes- does this sound familiar? Its because of the chlorine in the swimming pool water. Chlorine dries up the eyes and removes the film of tears that protect your eyes. That’s why, when you get out of that swimming pool, your eyes feel like there is grit and dust in them. There is a sensation of roughness and burning because the protective film has been removed. It’s the chlorine at work. So you get out of the water and attempt to wash your eyes with more water from the tap. That’s not going to help you as that water is also mixed with chlorine. Nasty situation, one would think. Hold on, we will speak of solutions shortly.

Red, dry eyes are not just a function of the swimming pool. Even after those long showers, your eyes sometimes feel gritty and dry. Working on computers for long, without regular blinking cause similar issues but that has nothing to do with chlorine 😊

 3. Weakens your immune system- Chlorine is used to kill harmful bacteria and other microbes in water. But everything has collateral damage. Chlorine removes the good and helpful bacteria that lives in your gut. When you drink water straight from the tap, you consume the chlorine which wipes out the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Since the gut is the primary house of our immunity because of the presence of millions of beneficial bacteria, we damage it dramatically every time we drink water laden with chlorine. There is linkage to IBS and other direct gut disorders, but also many auto immune disorders, with the loss of gut bacteria.

The beneficial bacteria also reside on our skin in large numbers. Baths with chlorinated water contribute to large scale decimation of these beneficial bacteria on the skin. We open ourselves up to infections and dry skin as we give up the protection of the beneficial bacteria.

Here is real proof that chlorine impacts good bacteria. When we brew our fresh fermented probiotic drinks and foods, one of the procedures we employ is to dechlorinate water before we brew our stock. There is a distinct difference in the brew if we do not do this. The ferments are less potent as the bacteria struggle to survive in the water laden with chlorine. For us, it’s an important attention to detail when we make our fermented probiotic drinks and foods.

 Ok enough about how chlorine harms you. There are many aspects of chlorine impact I have not touched on, but lets leave that for another day.

 Lets get down to solutions. Chlorine is an effervescent chemical. That means it vaporizes into the air if left open for a while.

Here is what I suggest we all do.

1. Get those jugs and jars into action- fill water into bottles and containers with water at night and cover them with a netted lid or cloth. By next morning, much of the chlorine would have gone from the water.
2. Please don’t drink water straight from the tap if you can avoid it. Its surely clean water. But you don’t want chlorine in you. All you have to do is let the water stand for a few hours.
3. If you feel up to it, you can boil the water. It speeds up chlorine removal
4. When you take hot showers, the chlorine is all around you in the air. The heated water, the flowing water are releasing their load of chlorine into the air rapidly. The chemical enters your airways, your skin, your hair. I know I am going to propose an old old practice and most of you will look at me with horror as though I belong to the bygone age 😊. But here it is, nonetheless- high tech solution alert- get that bucket!!! Fill it up with water and leave it at night. If you wish for warm water to bathe, just add some hot water to it and you are set. You save your hair, your skin, your lungs, your eyes from the chlorine deluge. Come on, give me the rousing applause I deserve for giving you this magic solution!!
5. For the post swim eyes, use water to wash them but ideally water that has been standing in containers for a few hours. This will help your eyes wash out the chlorine quickly. Post that, you can apply a drop of coconut oil to your eye lids and it will soothe faster.

That’s one long article! Phew. I hope you all apply these simple solutions to your life and alter health for the better through simple and real ways.

In the meantime, visit us at www.naturenudge.com and learn about the gorgeous ferments we make. Each one of these fermented foods and drinks are powerful probiotics. We handcraft every bottle right here in the little red dot, in the hope that one person served is one person restored to the road of better health.

Bhavani Suryavanshee, Director, Nature Nudge Wellness