Pale Skin - Art of Ayurveda Skin Color 2 of 9

What about pale skin? Well, each dosha has a pale skin type. Pitta people have fair skin and that naturally um now this is interesting because uh Pitta people have good strong circulation to their skin and so their skin generally has a healthy rosy glow to it and I think this photo on the on the right really characterizes that. She's got a little bit of makeup on which obscures the photo. That's unfortunate. But um but just in general, you see that her skin has a brightness to it. It doesn't look dull or lifeless. And that's how we know that there's good strong circulation uh to this person's uh skin. Uh but Pitta people generally have uh a fairer complexion and um uh and their skin is is sensitive. It freckles easily and it's prone to sunburn. Note that fair skin, by the way, is a little different than pale skin. And when when I say pale skin, I'm thinking of skin that um um is unusually very light and um and may have some palar associated with it. Um that may look a little bit dull. Uh not this sort of fair skin. It's just lighter toned skin that's prone to burn. So when this uh pit of fair skin is out of balance, it tends to get red, fleshed and irritated. Now vata pale skin is a more true pale skin. You see here that the skin um is a and this is imbalanced by the way um imbalanced skin. Not all vata pale skin is imbalanced, but this uh person is imbalanced. This seems a little bit anemic here. Um, and the skin just lacks the same degree of vitality as in the previous one, in the previous photo. Um, so if a person has anemia or a blood deficiency, they need to buck up the blood. We need to build the blood. We need we may need to add some heat, too. So, um, weak blood uh, that's anemic blood can't really carry oxygen that well. So, if we heat it up, it'll move faster. So that will increase the amount of oxygen delivery. So heat can increase oxygen delivery and also we can build up the blood so that the blood can carry more oxygen too. Some of your blood builders are going to be chiwin pr liver um you know chicken liver or something like that raisins molasses red meat all good bloodbuilders and there are many sometimes a vata person has pale skin because the skin is cold uh from deficiency. So if a person has uh a only a very thin layer of fat, then their skin's going to get cold all the time. And as soon as the skin gets cold, the blood vessels in the surface of the skin are going to constrict um to prevent uh too much hot blood uh from getting close to the surface of the skin. Well, because if the hot blood gets to the surface of the skin, then the heat is going to be lost. So thin skin gets cold easily and cold skin lacks blood flow and um and that's going to make the skin pale because there's less blood in the skin. In fact, that explains why in winter your skin is pale and in summer your skin is pink because in summer your body tries to get more blood flow to the surface of the skin and uh that uh makes your skin look red and it helps your body radiate heat. So the remedy for cold skin with poor circulation can be pungent warm warming spices like turmeric uh or ginger or black pepper. Now kafa skin looks very different. Now kafa skin is cool because kafa people have low metabolism and that low metabolism makes the skin cool. Um but in kafa the skin is thick not thin. So yeah, what more do we need to say? Uh if a cafa person wants to brighten up the color of their skin, they're going to need circulatory uh stimulants like turmeric, cinnamon, and trick. And they're going to need vasod dilators like um Tulsi or holy basil and cloves.