Do you love the feeling of your body splitting the water while swimming? I do. But that doesn’t change the fact that I hate how pool water can do a number of damage to my skin, my nails, and especially my hair. Swimmer’s hair is the term that many people refer to the damaged hair under a prolonged swimming period. If you have swimmer’s hair problem, we may have the solution, if you don’t, we may help you to prevent it, because like it or not, swimmer’s hair will happen to everyone.
What is swimmer’s hair?
The effects of swimmer’s hair may vary from person to person, but the effects will likely to be one or many of the followings: dry hair, damaged hair (split end or crack in the outside layer – cuticle), discoloration (both virgin & bleached), and on some extreme cases – hair loss.
Depend on your type of hair, you will see different levels of damage to your hair. Oily hair will probably be the type of hair get the least effect from swimming. On the opposite side, you will feel much more effects with dry or thin hair.
On the discoloration effect, the conference paper “Hair color damages caused by exposure to chlorinated water in the presence of ultraviolet radiation” written in 2010 by MSc Rafael Pires-Oliveira from University of Campinas, he found that:
- Virgin dark brown or black hair tends to turn redder and more yellow
- Both virgin & bleached blond hair tends to lose yellow and more green or silver
- Bleached dark brown or black hair tends to turn redder, but less red than virgin black hair
What causes swimmer’s hair?
According to the article “Hair color damages caused by exposure to chlorinated water in the presence of ultraviolet radiation“, there are 2 factors that will cause discoloration of swimmer’s hair: chlorine and UV sunlight. It was observered that with outdoor pool with the effects of chlorine & sunlight will accelerate the process of discoloration, meanwhile with the indoor pool, the discoloration effect would still happen but with much lower intensity.
The green color from swimmer’s hair is not actually a direct effect from chlorine, but by a compound called Patina (or oxidized copper). If you have copperware or copper wires exposed to air & water, you will find a thin blue-green layer cover. That blue-green layer is actually oxidized copper. There are copper mineral in pool water, especially pool water that is sourced from wells. Chlorine in pool water will react with copper mineral and the result is oxidized copper. Oxidized copper will in turn absorb into your hair and damage the melanin in your hair, causing the green-ish discoloration.
Meanwhile, chlorine & several chemical compounds in pool water will suck out the moisture from your hair and skin, causing dry, rough & damaged hair. Some people also claim that chlorine also cause dandruff.
How to prevent swimmer’s hair?
As Desiderius Erasmus once said: “prevention is better than cure”, is completely true in this case. The cost & efforts of repairing hair from swimmer’s hair will be much greater than to prevent. But we can only prevent swimmer’s hair to a degree: you won’t be able to completely keep chlorine from affecting your hair. And that’s a fact that every swimmers have to live with.
Wear a swim cap. By using a swim cap, we can keep our hair (again, to some extent) from drowning in chlorine and oxidized copper. Meanwhile, a cap may prevent the water from washing away oil on our hair & skin, which is critical in our situation.
Soak your hair. This may seems counterintuitive, but this method actually works. By wetting your hair, you will prevent some of the chlorine from binding directly with your hair.
Use leave-in conditioner and/or coconut oil. Applying leave-in conditioner & coconut oil everytimes before entering the pool is a great way to maintain moisture on your hair & skin.
Wash your hair right after a swim session. By washing your hair after a swim, you will remove the chemical compounds from your hair & skin.
How to treat swimmer’s hair?
Your hair will constantly grow everyday, so the swimmer’s hair’s damage will not be permanent. But it’s also critical to maintain healthy hair before it leads to worse problems. There is no recipe to cure swimmer’s hair for everyone, you will have to go through the process of trial and error before finding the method (or a combination of methods) that will work for your hair.
Use special shampoo for swimmers or clarifying shampoo. A clarifying shampoo will do the job of removing chemical compounds from your hair throughly. There are also special swimmer shampoo that can remove copper & other minerals from your hair to prevent discoloration. Swimmer shampoo also applies a layer of waxy coating on your hair to keep moisture and prevent other chemical compounds binding with your hair.
Use conditioner with UV filter. UV filter conditioner contains ingredients that will shield your hair from UV radiation from sunlight. You will feel the effects of UV filter conditioner especially if you have bleached hair or dark-toned hair.
Gently comb your hair. Wet hair with the combination of damaged hair will most likely to be tangled, fall-out if your brush/comb your hair too hard. Use a wide-toothed comb will have a great effect. Also, slide your fingers through your hairs will do a great job.
Provide your body with food good for hair. According to an article on WebMD, several types of food are good healthy hair, such as: egg, salmon, greek yogurt, spinach, guava, cereral, lean meat.
Conclusion
Whether swimming is your passion and you practice swimming everyday, or you just casually going to the pool once in a while, you’re always exposed to the potential of damaging your hair. There is no “too early” or “too late” to prevent & cure swimmer’s hair, you always should be on the active course of actions to maintain a healthy hair.
Keypoints
- Swimmer’s hair is dry, rough, damaged hair; and also refers to the discoloration of hair, mostly to blue-green color or red-yellow color.
- UV radiation from sunlight will accelerate the process of swimmer’s hair.
- Chlorine & oxidized copper are the main culprits to your swimmer’s hair.
- To prevent hair damage, you may want to use a swimming cap, soak your hair before a swim, use leave-in conditioner or coconut oil, and wash your hair right after a swim session.
- To cure swimmer’s hair, you will need to use special swimmer shampoo or clarifying shampoo, use UV filter conditioner, genly comb your hair, and eat healthy food for hair.