Prickly Heat Treatments:

The rashes that appear on the skin due to excessive sweating in the summer season are known as prickly heat rashes or sweat rashes. When the body sweats excessively due to the heated atmosphere outside, it blocks the sweat glands thus preventing a proper purification of the blood. This condition is found mostly in tropical humid countries and among children and infants as their sweat glands are not fully developed yet. Prickly heats are symptomised by small grainy eruptions on the skin that are either red only a shade darker than the color of the skin. These eruptions are often itchy and are accompanied by a burning sensation. Once the prickly heats have occurred the chances for a bacterial infection setting in are also high.

The home remedies for this condition are rather elaborate but almost always sure to work. Take an earthen vessel and fill it up with clean drinking water. Take about twenty Indian gooseberries and wipe each one in turn before putting them into the pot. Keep the mouth of the pot covered with a lid and let it stay overnight. In the morning, mash the gooseberries in the water as they will now have become soft. Strain the water and add a little sugar to taste and then drink it. This will help remove the excess heat from the body and will keep the stomach clear and improve digestion. Drinking around three or four glasses of lime juice every day is likely to clear up the rashes in a fortnight or so. The leaves of the margosa plant can be used to scrub your body lightly and its medicinal properties will help with the rashes. Make some sandalwood paste and add a little rose water to it. Apply onto the rashes to cool the skin to cure the inflammation. Take a little gram flour and add pure distilled water to it to make a smooth paste. Apply onto all the inflamed areas and leave on for about half an hour. Wash off thoroughly while having a bath. Cut open a watermelon and remove the peel. Eat up the fruit and then use the peel to gently rub on the heat rashes. The body thus gets cooled both from the inside as well as the outside. Make a paste by mixing a little flour or cornstarch in water. Use the paste on the rashes and leave on for forty minutes. A cold water shower after this will help remove the dried flour from your body or you could alternatively soak a towel in cold water and apply it as a cold compress to the skin.