Hard water typically causes more issues than soft water due to the number of minerals that make up hard water, including calcium and magnesium. These minerals can cause skin damage because they have the ability to change the pH balance of your skin, which can have an effect on the microbiome. According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, “The microbiome is the collection of all microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their genes, that naturally live on our bodies and inside us.”
Want to determine whether your water is hard or soft? MindBodyGreen has a super handy hack for finding out. Add tap water to a bottle (filling it one-third of the way up), add a squirt of liquid soap, and shake. If the water turns cloudy and has little foam, then you have hard water.
