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Here’s how to soothe your skin naturally
Along with summer come problems of excessive perspiration and prickly heat. Shikha Sharma lists some home remedies that can help keep your body cool
Ayurveda calls summer the pitta or fire season for good reason. As the weather gets hotter and the environment more parched, if you have a pitta constitution, your liver begins to heat up. This, along with excessive perspiration, blocks your sweat glands and clogs your pores with oil and dust. The problem worsens if you wear tight clothes or synthetic fabric.
Once you’re attacked by prickly heat, life can become hell. So here are a few home remedies that will help you keep your body cool in summer.
1. Mix eight drops of lemon juice with two tablespoons of aloe vera juice. Apply all over the neck and back before bed.
Why: Aloe vera juice is an antiseptic and soothing skin balm. Lemon juice opens the sweat glands and is a natural anti-bacterial.
2. Avoid eggs, chicken, fish, red meats, garlic, garam masala, fried foods and overspiced foods such as chole bhature.
Why: These are high pitta foods that increase the heat in the body, especially the liver.
3. Drink juice made of aloe vera, wheat grass, bottle gourd, mint and amla. Eat rice, barley and curd. Drink chaas as well as coconut water.
Why: These pitta-pacifying foods will cool you down.
4. Consume rose-based foods such as gulkand and rose sherbets, spray or apply rose water to pitta-affected areas.
Why: Rose is known to have heat-reducing properties.
5. Consume herbs such as shatavari and triphala
Why: Both of these (about 1/3rd of a teaspoon to be consumed twice a day in powder form) cure excessive pitta. Shatavari also reduces stress. Triphala removes excess pitta via the colon.
6. Avoid using petroleum jelly, heavy creams and foundation.
Why: Your sweat glands are clogged already.
7. Apply a cooling pack with a paste of sandalwood, khus-khus seeds and rose water.
Why: To reduce the itchiness and soothe your skin.
8. Make sure infants and young children wear cool, soft cotton.
Why: Their immature glands make them prone to heat rash.
From HT Brunch, May 15, 2016
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