Category: Chlorine Removal Tips

Chlorine Hair, otherwise known as “swimmer’s hair” is dry, brittle hair that has been severely damaged by chlorine. Under the right conditions swimmer’s hair may even have a greenish tint to it. Fortunately, swimmers hair is easy to prevent and fix if  you do this one thing.

Jump to: How To Fix Chlorine Hair

Chlorine Hair: What is it exactly?

In the most basic sense, chlorine hair is hair that has been severely damaged by chlorine and may have a greenish tint. Swimmer’s who spend hours in the pool or who swim every day are subject to the damage caused by chlorine if they don’t work to prevent it.

Chlorine is a great chemical for keeping our pools sanitized–and thank heavens for that. Nobody wants to swim in a filthy public swimming pool. However, chlorine is highly toxic. It is even deadly in high concentrations. Just to give you an idea of how deadly chlorine gas can be, it has been used in chemical warfare.

Obviously, the concentration of chlorine in swimming pools is much lower (only about 1 ppm), but you’ve probably notice some of the side effects: red eyes, coughing, dry skin, and even chlorine hair.

Chlorine damages your hair after prolonged swimming. It’s attracted to organic matter–and you guessed it–your body and hair is a giant chlorine magnet. Chlorine forms a strong bond to your hair and the more you swim through the water, the more chlorine bonds to your hair.

The chlorine is alkaline which makes the cuticle of your hair lift. When your hair is healthy and shiny, the cuticle lies flat and locks moisture into your hair. When your cuticle lifts, more chlorine can strip the moisture from your hair and they cycle continues. Because your hair cuticle have lifted is one reason why your hair feels dry, brittle and rough after swimming.

How to Prevent Chlorine Hair

We’ve previously written this comprehensive article on how to prevent swimmer’s hair. Here is the summary:

1. Wet your hair before swimming: Take a shower and soak your hair with tap water. Your hair acts like a sponge. By soaking your hair with tap water, it will absorb less pool water.
2. Don’t use regular shampoo: Because regular shampoos are formulated to remove dirt and grease, they don’t work well for swimmers.
3. Use natural oil: Adding a little natural oil to your hair before you swim provides some protection from the chlorinated water.
4. Better yet, use swimming-specific conditioner: Use a small amount of swimming-specific conditioner. It will provide a little protection between our hair and the pool water.
5. Wear a swimming cap: Wearing a swimming cap provides the best protection between your hair and the swimming pool. It keep the pool from constantly washing through your hair and minimizes the damaged caused by chlorine.

It is impossible, however, to keep chlorine off of your hair. The pool water will rinse out oils and conditioners, and no matter what swimming cap you wear, pool water will find its way inside. It’s a good idea to use a swimming-specific shampoo and conditioner after swimming to remove the chlorine that has attached to your hair and prevent the long-term buildup of chlorine.

Why Normal Shampoo Doesn’t Work

Normal shampoo doesn’t release the strong chlorine bond has with your hair. A swimming-specific shampoo like these do. Normal shampoo is also designed to remove dirt while swimming specific shampoo is gentle and designed to gently remove impurities such as the neutralized and residual chlorine.

Strong detergent shampoos will only make chlorine hair worse. A swimming-specific shampoo is best for removing chlorine after swimming.

How To Fix Chlorine Hair

The best way to fix chlorine hair is to use ELITE Conditioner. If you have chlorine hair–and we mean chlorine hair of the worst kind, then follow this procedure:

1. Rinse your hair thoroughly with warm tap water.
2. Apply a generous amount of ELITE Conditioner to your hair. Work through well. Massage the product gently into your hair.
3. Once your hair becomes detangled, gently comb the product through.
4. Wrap in a damp towel and let sit for 10 minutes.
5. Rinse and repeat if necessary.

ELITE Conditioner is different than any other conditioner you’ve used and here’s why:

• Neutralizes Chlorine: ELITE Conditioner effectively neutralizes chlorine.
• Adds Moisture: It is formulated with coconut oil, olive oil, rice bran oil, mineral oil and vegetable glycerine which add moisture back into your hair.
• Replaces Critical Nutrients: It adds nutrients back into your hair that will help make your hair strong and shiny.
• Helps Rebalance pH: Because pool water is alkaline, it makes the hair cuticle stand up. This gives your hair a gritty feeling. Chlorine Plus works to neutralize the pH which relaxes the cuticle allowing it to lay flat again. When the cuticle scales interlock, they trap the moisture in your hair. It will leave your hair looking shiny and feeling smooth.
• Removes Impurities: Chlorine Plus conditioner contains Aztec Clay. Aztec Clay works well to remove impurities like residual chlorine. This works much better on damaged hair than using strong detergents or clarifying shampoos.

ELITE Conditioner also works well as a solo product to maintain and protect healthy hair. If you only want to carry one hair product to the pool, we recommend this one.

This post may seem a little like splitting hairs (pun intended), but whether or not swimmers’ shampoo will fix swimmer’s hair will take a little explaining.

Swimmers’ shampoos are designed to maintain healthy hair.

Swimming-specific shampoos are designed to remove chlorine from swimmer’s hair and to help maintain healthy hair in spite of continual damage caused by chlorine. But if you are talking about “swimmer’s hair” as a condition of damaged hair rather than the hair of a swimmer, then it takes a little more to fix it than just removing chlorine.

While swimmer’s shampoo will effectively remove chlorine, hair that has been severely damaged by chlorine needs a lot more TLC.

What is swimmer’s hair?

Swimmer’s hair is hair that hasn’t been cared for properly and has had long-term exposure to chlorinated water. This results is swimmer’s hair, which in essence is badly damaged hair.

Chlorine is alkaline. Alkaline substances have a number higher than 7 on the pH scale–if you remember your high school chemistry. However, the pH of healthy hair is slightly acidic–a number lower than 7 on the same pH scale.

Under normal conditions, the cuticle lies flat. The cuticle is the outer layer of the hair shaft and is a scale-like structure. When the cuticle lies flat and the scales interlace, it locks in the moisture of the hair shaft. But when the cuticle is exposed to alkaline water, like chlorinated pool water, the sales of the cuticle lift up.

When the cuticle lifts up your hair becomes dry and brittle and has a flat appearance as opposed to shiny, healthy hair. Your hair will also feel rough rather than feeling smooth.

As you can see, getting rid of chlorine is only part of the problem, and shampoo is the wrong tool for the job.

What are the limitations of swimmer’s shampoo?

Shampoo is a special surfactant (surface acting agent). In layman’s terms, it is a soap. It is very difficult–if not impossible–to make a shampoo that adds oils back into the hair shaft. By definition, a surfactant is designed to remove grease and oil. Shampoos have degrees of aggressiveness, and swimming-specific shampoos are designed to be mild, but they don’t put moisture back into the hair shaft.

The biggest limiting factor of swimmer’s shampoos, in fixing badly damaged hair, is they don’t add moisture back into the hair shaft.

What is the best product to use to fix swimmer’s hair?

The best product to fix swimmer’s hair is a swimming-specific hair conditioner. Goodbye Chlorine’s hair conditioner for swimmers is uniquely designed to fix swimmer’s hair. Here’s why:

1. Releases chlorine – Goodbye Chorine’s hair conditioner effectively neutralizes chlorine which is the first step towards fixing swimmer’s hair.
2. Adds moisture – The hair conditioner is formulated with coconut oil and olive oil. It will replace the moisture in the hair shaft in a snap.
3. pH balanced – It is pH balanced so the cuticle will lie flat and hold in the moisture of the hair shaft.
4. Removes impurities – The conditioner will bind to and remove impurities on rinse out. This is a much better way to fix damaged hair than by using a surfactant like shampoo.

If you have badly damaged hair and need to fix swimmer’s hair, buy a product like Goodbye Chlorine’s hair conditioner. It’s a good product to use daily after swimming as well. Swimming-specific shampoos are great to use in combination but don’t count on them for fixing severely damaged hair.