How to Keep Your Hair and Scalp Healthy With Hard Water

I personally have water that is hard due to a large abundance of sulfur being present in it. I decided to experiment with this method after hearing about a couple of cleaning methods and thought I might give it a shot. It works, though not as good as using clarifying shampoo, but good enough to make hair look much healthier and keeps the scalp clean and free of the hard water deposits that form on it with extremely hard water. If you've ever scraped what looks like soap flakes off your scalp--you know it's not dandruff as it looks similar to powdered laundry soap--you will know what I mean about the deposits. Read on to find out more.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• baking soda
• clear soda--can use vinegar if you don't have soda
• purified or distilled water
• your regular shampoo
• a container to mix the soda with the the baking soda

1. Mix two tablespoons to 1/4 cup baking soda in a container with about half a can of clear soda. For use on longer hair, using up to the whole can may be necessary. It will foam a bit and that is fine.

2. Once it is mixed, the liquid that forms can be used immediately on the hair. Make sure to gradually pour it on, getting the top and sides of the head, plus all the hair.

3. It can be left in for a few minutes, depending on how bad the scalp is. Once satisfied with the time left in, use purified or distilled water to rinse hair completely.

4. Use normal shampoo and conditioner or 2-in-1, making sure to use less than would be necessary to clean hair with hard water--likely the bottle's recommended dime sized amount is plenty. This is due to the fact that the cleaner water is much more effective in cleaning hair.

5. Rinse hair again with the purified or distilled water. (By the time a person is done using purified water, 1/2 gallon up to 2 gallons may be used depending on length of hair--if warmer water is preferred heat some on stove beforehand and mix it with cooler water for desired temperature).

6. Dry hair as normal. Scalp should have little of the soap flake-type residue coming out and the stuff that comes out is likely due to the scalp being cleansed--unless the scalped was not rinsed properly.

7. Hair should look much healthier due to the cleansing process and use of purified or distilled water. The scalp should also be cleaner and feel much healthier--no more itching or trapped moisture/oils underneath the hard water deposit film as it has been removed.

Tips & Warnings

• This is to cleanse the scalp and hair if normally hard water is used to wash hair.
• I recommend diet lemon lime soda be used as it it has a pleasant scent and types containing citric acid may actually help the cleaning process.
• Filtered tap water could be used, but try to filter it more than once before using. Even if there is a tap filter in place or other type, with hard water it is likely best to filter it up to 3 to 4 times before using.
• Don't be extremely conservative of water--enough must be used to get the shampoo and conditioner out or there will be soap deposits still left on the scalp.