I love sharing great guest posts with our readers! This one is so important for the hot summer months! Enjoy!!—Alexis

As the days get warmer and sunnier, many people head to the pool to cool off, get some exercise, and enjoy the nice weather. Swimming is an excellent way to stay in shape while having fun and spending time in the sunshine. But taking care of your skin is just as important in the summer as it is in the colder seasons, so you need to take a few precautions before jumping in to the pool.

Swimming pools are treated with chlorine to prevent the growth of germs and bacteria in the water. Although chlorine is necessary to keep swimming pools safe, it can also cause skin damage after prolonged exposure. To keep your skin happy and healthy, you’d be wise to learn just how chlorine affects the skin and what you can do to prevent damage.

How to Protect Your Skin From Chlorine

 

How Chlorine Affects Your Skin

When you spend too much time in the pool, the chlorine will strip your skin and hair of their natural oils, which are important for keeping your skin healthy and moisturized. You may have noticed that your skin feels dry, flaky, or irritated after spending a day in the pool. The chlorine is probably to blame.

Over time, this can lead to premature aging. Chlorine seeps into your skin through your pores and causes long-lasting dryness and damage. This eventually may lead to wrinkles, fine lines, or even small skin lesions.

Chlorine can also kill the good bacteria in your body, which can lead to a number of skin problems. If you swallow chlorinated water while you’re swimming, it may harm your intestinal flora, which are good bacteria that help with digestion and the production of certain vitamins, like K and B12. This can cause eczema, rashes, acne, and other uncomfortable skin issues.

How to Protect Yourself

Taking care of your skin before and after you get into the pool will help prevent chlorine damage. Here are six things you can do to protect yourself from chlorine:

Take a shower before and after you swim

If your skin is already wet when you get in to the pool, it’s less likely to absorb the chlorinated water. Also, when chlorine reacts to the ammonia in your sweat, it creates chloramine, which can be even more harmful than chlorine. Rinsing off before you go into the pool will remove sweat on your body and prevent it from forming chloramine on your skin. A pre-swim soak will also ensure your hair absorbs untreated water, not pool water. Be sure to rinse off only with water, not shampoo, before swimming as shampoos can be stripping to your hair.

Showering after you leave the pool will remove any residual chlorine left on your skin to prevent you from contracting a rash or folliculitis. Use a gentle soap and shampoo to clean your hair and body but don’t let the water run too hot. Excessively hot water will dry out your skin and has a similar effect as chlorine.

Swim outdoors

You might have noticed that indoor pools feel much more humid than outdoor pools and have a stronger chemical smell. Indoor pools typically don’t have much ventilation, so any chlorine that leaves the water just lingers in the air around you. With outdoor pools, those chemicals escape into the open air and won’t contaminate your hair or skin.

Apply lotion or natural oil

Applying lotion gives your skin an extra layer of protection from the chlorine. If you’re swimming outdoors, you should apply sunscreen to protect your skin from both the sun and chlorinated water at the same time. Some of the best natural oils for skin protection include coconut oil, castor oil, and flaxseed oil. Depending on how long you swim, you may have to reapply the lotion or oil a few times over the course of the day to maintain it’s protective barrier.

Use conditioner or hair oil

Chlorine can be just as damaging for your hair as it is for your skin, but conditioner or hair oil will help protect it. These products create a barrier between your hair and the chlorine in the water, which will minimize the damage. However, if you apply hair oil and are swimming in an outdoor pool, you should wear a swim cap as the oil can worsen sun damage.

Make a vitamin C solution

Vitamin C neutralizes chlorine and is a perfectly safe, natural skin protection method. You first need to buy some ascorbic acid or sodium ascorbate, both being forms of vitamin C. Mix approximately one teaspoon into a cup of distilled water and pour the solution into a spray bottle. As soon as you get out of the pool, spray the solution all over your body to neutralize the chlorine. The solution only lasts roughly 24 hours before it starts to break down, so you shouldn’t mix it more than one day before you go to the pool.

Just remember that if you spend long hours in swimming pools on a regular basis it will start to take a toll on your skin. You don’t have to sacrifice your healthy skin to go swimming, though. So long as you take care of your skin before and after getting into the pool, you should be able to swim all you want without causing any damage.

Bio:

Laura is a writer for Zwivel.

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