Katie Brindle is not re-igniting the SPF debate, don’t worry! She personally stays out of the sun but can appreciate that those summer rays on your skin can feel heavenly. But the experience can be ruined if you are prone to prickly heat.
In Chinese wisdom, rashes can be a sign of imbalance in the body. This might be due to toxic emotions or a poor diet, chronic stress or fatigue.
The body uses skin to try and eliminate toxins. So, as well as treating rashes to clear them on the surface, it’s a good idea to try and work out the root cause of your imbalance.
In Chinese medicine, prickly heat often occurs when damp trapped inside the body meets the heat from the sun. Heat rashes can indicate an imbalanced digestive system. In Chinese Medicine, the spleen is in charge of transporting and transforming bodily fluids. Focusing on the spleen allows us to treat prickly heat from the inside, as well as topically.
Here are some easy fixes.
Make sure your environment is well ventilated, choose breathable fabrics and keep the skin clear and dry. Then, work on reducing the dampness in your body and supporting your spleen. These simple steps may not sound like much, but over time they will gently help restore balance.
• Logic dictates you should stay out of direct sunlight. Stay cool and in the shade. If you do want to sunbathe, use an organic sun cream which will allow your skin to breathe and expel toxins more effectively. If you have a jade gua sha tool, you can use it directly onto affected areas to help draw out the heat and provide cooling relief.
• Comb your body. Focus on your stomach and inner and outer legs to support the stomach and spleen, but you can and should work all over, as the body is a whole and the aim is to clear the heat in order to stop the symptoms. Just avoid any affected areas.
• Chinese medicine has lots of fantastic nutritional advice for cooling the body naturally. Firstly, don’t think that cold food and drink is good – it’s not. Energetically, your stomach is like a bubbling cauldron, so pouring ice on it forces it to work much harder,
• Instead, choose naturally cooling foods like cucumber and melon, served at room temperature. If you are really suffering, then empirically Chinese Millet porridge is fantastic for soothing and strengthening the stomach and spleen (you can buy it on Amazon) And apply it topically to affected areas to cool the skin. Bananas are said to be damp forming, so try and avoid them for a while.
• Heat is exacerbated by movement and stress. So, make sure that if you are in the sun, don’t be running around! Try and allocate a little time to just relax and do nothing.
• Finally, practise Qigong and /or a good breath technique, such as the Inner Smile, to calm your whole system and help expel excess heat out via the mouth.
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