Skin Rashes Caused By Sweat - Treatment Varies By Sweatiness Levels
Skin Rashes Caused By Sweat -
Treatment Varies By Sweatiness Levels
Hot weather leads to sweaty days and many people are reporting cases of rashes appearing in areas that skin folds and sweat accumulates. Traditional Chinese medicine Dr. Yao-Chien Tsai of Taipei City Hospital Renai Branch provides his viewpoint on the phenomenon. From a TCM standpoint, these rashes are dampness-induced problems. In a clinical situation, patients are treated with varying formulas based off of their levels of dampness and heat.
Dr. Tsai notes that, areas where skin wrinkles or fold can easily accumulate sweat that can cause the skin to be irritated and therefore result in rashes. TCM therapies often use Talc and Scute Formula (Gan Lu Xiao Du Dan), Six to One Powder (Liu Yi San), and other formulas to prevent these rashes from occurring, but medications vary accordingly to the patient’s condition.
During hot summers, a lot of people will use the heat as an end to losing weight through sweating. These people intentionally wear tightly fitted clothing, airtight clothes, or even multiple layers of varying fabrics to induce sweat loss. They are extremely prone to irritating their skin, which may lead to rashes or inflammation.
On the contrary, there are those whom barely break a sweat, are afraid of the cold, and experience headaches under the hot summer heat. From a TCM standpoint, people should sweat a suitable amount during summer - not too much, and not none at all. These people who suffer from said symptoms are too often in air-conditioned environments, which symptoms of “external cold.” Typical TCM remedies include formulas with pungent and warm properties that promote sweating.
Due to modern commercialization of air conditioning and ice-desserts, there are always a lot of patients whom are both cold in the interior and exterior. Doctors indicate that sweating removes excess heat from the body through sweat glands and sweat, but nowadays people often use the wrong methods to refresh themselves from the hot summer heat, causing many complications. For example, excessively drinking cold beverages and cool foods, or taking a cold shower or walking into air conditioning after heavily sweating are both examples of habits that inhibit the body from dispelling internal heat, which leads to the unhealthy accumulation of internal heat.