My love of makeup and beauty brings me across a lot of weirdo solution for things that don’t work.  “Rub butternut squash on your head and see the calluses disappear off your feet in seconds!” “Drip honey in your eyeballs to change their color!”  Ok I semi made those up, and they’re completely absurd but you get the point…Actually I think I did read the honey thing on Pinterest once.  Don’t drip food into your eyes, that just sounds like a really bad idea.

 I won’t start listing  all the real ones because we’ll be here all day, but trust me even with my skeptical, discerning approach to these things there are a lot of flops.  Then once in while the internet gives me something that is a really simple and elegant solution for a problem I didn’t even know I had.

So in the name of being real with you guys, let’s get a little personal.  All through my teen years and into my early twenties I suffered with really bad body acne.  AKA back-ne AKA I didn’t wear a tank top until I was 23.  At around that age my body acne began to clear up on it’s own, I guess due to growing up and having more even hormone levels, and probably the fact that I began eating a more healthy diet.  Even then I would suffer the odd breakout and it was always painful and kinda embarrassing, but I accepted it as a part of my life and something I would have to deal with.

Sometime last year I began researching the water quality in the area I was living in, and somehow ended up down a google rabbit hole of tap water information.  I ended up reading about how tap water, specifically the chlorine added to your tap water, can have a negative effect on your skin, hair and nails.  Of course I immediately deemed this unacceptable. I mean I had no solid evidence that it was 100% true but it sure sounds like it makes sense, and I figured it was worth a shot just to see if I noticed a difference myself.  I had no notion of what type of improvement I might see, but I’m a beauty blogger and I want to try stuff, so I ordered a filter for my shower which promised to remove the chlorine among other things.

What I noticed right off the bat was that I no longer felt that tight, semi-itchy feeling that you get sometimes after a hot shower, and my hair felt pretty soft.  Off to a good start but I wasn’t blown over by it just yet.  I knew this one was a long term experiment so I just left it in the shower to see how it went after a few months.

What I noticed over the next six months was pretty impressive.  My hair color stayed fresh much longer, my cuticles were much less dry and the surprise side effect: I hadn’t had a flare up of body acne in months!    It took me a while to even realize it was happening, but once I noticed my skin had been clear for a long time I kept better track of it.  The real moment of clarity came when I moved into a new apartment and was without a filtered shower for about a week until I got a new one. (Just FYI you can take the filter off and put it in a different shower, but the pipes in my last place were so old that we had to use special plumbing tape and all kinds of nonsense to screw the filter into the shower in the first place and then we couldn’t get it off)   Low and behold, within five days I had several zits on my back and shoulders.  Now I know scientifically this isn’t enough evidence to prove that the filter is the only thing  helping my skin, but I think all of the benefits combined speak for themselves.

Thankfully I had a filter again pretty quickly, I got THIS ONE from amazon and it was even better than my first one.  It seems a little pricey at first but it screws on behind your shower head so the installation is a no brainer, it lasts a whole year (you just have to flip it around after six months) and when the year is up you don’t have to get any pesky new filter to install you just get a whole new one and screw it right on behind the shower head again.  I was initially concerned that it would decrease the water pressure, and you long haired ladies know how important that is, but the pressure is pretty much exactly the same as it was without the filter.  Oh, and my back-ne hasn’t flared up since!  I’m pleased, very very pleased.

I’m not sure if this is something that will cure everyones body acne, everyone is different and acne has a million different causes. It may also help some people with acne on their face, but I didn’t really get to test that since I am lucky enough not to have any notable acne on my face.  Neither does the boyfriend so I couldn’t even use him as a guinea pig.  So many men have good skin…and eyelashes…and eyebrows.  Ron Livingston gives me a serious case of brow envy.  Is it weird to feel jealous of a man’s eyebrows?

Anyway, combined with the decreased dryness of the hair, skin and nails, as well as my hair color not washing out as quickly, not to mention the lack of that tight itchy feeling after a shower – I would say it’s worth a shot.  Fancy filtered showers = winning.