Body Scrubs for Diabetic Patients

Recently we treated a 78 year old Diabetic lady who just underwent a surgery on the foot. She has been suffering from Diabetes and Neuropathy since more than four decades now.

A typical sign of diabetes patients is that their skin starts showing black spots and patches. Especially for those suffering from Neuropathy (a condition where feelings are numbed in the feet), it is difficult to keep the feet clean and maintain healthy skin. The skin needs to be kept moisturized regularly and dry, black skin needs to be exfoliated and removed regularly.

My daughter and I used our whole gamut of treatments- Body Scrubs, Body Wraps, a few Reflexology techniques, Reiki as well as massage techniques to help maintain the health of her feet. (Of course, this was done with the permission of the doctor).

The doctor visited her every alternate day for dressing her wound and had suggested scrubbing the feet (exempting the wound area) to rid her of dry skin and the danger of more infection. I must say that we saw great results with our home-made body scrub. After just the first session, the doctor exclaimed about the change in the look of the feet. They looked cleaner, whiter and healthy. Another one or two sessions and all the dry and dead skin would be completely gone.

The patient felt very good and positive on seeing such a drastic change. It gave her positivity and faith during her healing process. The scrub was warm in property and gave a soothing warm sensation to the aching and healing feet. It was a relaxing and luxurious, first-time experience for her.

I am specially sharing this experience because there is a common belief that body scrubs are only for beauty and are an unnecessary luxury. But in most cases, it helps in moisturizing the skin, keeping it healthy, removing dead skin, thereby giving a nice soft glow and helps in healing. The herbs used in the scrub help detoxify the body, increase blood circulation, in many cases help in pain relief and most importantly, make a person feel good and positive. Positive state of mind is very important for giving hope, will power and strength to a patient to cope with the long and tedious task of healing after a surgery.

As an additional remedy for any dark pigmentation on the skin, we added an application of honey and lemon after the treatment, to keep the skin moisturized and to help bleach it.

Anyone suffering from dry, dead skin and also dark patches on the skin, should give scrubs and wraps a try. Most people feel the difference from the first session itself. However, a word of caution – make sure you get the treatment from a trained therapist who knows about different kinds of skin conditions and how to treat them. Also, in cases of a diabetic patient or someone who recently has undergone surgery, one must have the permission of a medical practitioner.

Pinakin Shah

Body-Mind Therapist, Owner and Trainer at Pristine Senses Academy, 

Massage Trainer, Reflexologist and Reiki Practitioner.

New Year, New Changes. Are We Ready?

Every new day, every new year brings some changes with it. We are hopeful, fearful, wishful and determined of many things that lay ahead of us this year. But are we ready to handle changes- big or small?

Let’s learn two Yogic practices (taught at The Yoga Institute, Santacruz) that will help us cope with change.

Practice 1 – Reflection

When you look into a mirror, what does it show you? Unless it’s a magic mirror, it will show you exactly the way you are. It will not judge you and say you are good looking or ugly or fat or thin. It is our mind that does that analysis. The mirror just does its job of showing you what you are.

In the same way, Reflection as a practice helps you see all events of the day just the way they are, without judging them. It helps us become objective.

How to do it?

•         Sit in a meditative posture (avoid lying down).
•         Visualize every single event of that day from waking up in the morning to sleeping at night.
•         Avoid spending too much time on one event or analyzing why and how it happened.
•         Just move from event to event.
•         When you come to the end of this practice, open your eyes.
•         This practice would approximately take 15 minutes.

Note: Avoid writing the events instead of visualizing them. Writing tends to become planned as we have to think of the right words. This way, we end up evaluating things. Instead, we have to train the mind to become objective. Just watch events pass like a TV show.

Practice 2 – Anitya Bhavana (Anitya- Impermanent. Bhavana- Attitude)

After the practice of reflection, let’s concentrate on the following statement:

“What was in the morning is not at mid-day. What was at mid-day is not at midnight; for all things are transitory. Why should I be attached to anything when nothing is permanent and everything is changeful?”

When doing reflection, you must have noticed this. Nothing is the same. Your moods, the environment, the world around you; is constantly changing. Still many times, we get uncomfortable with change. When passing school and going into college, we are scared of what lies ahead of us, when passing college and going out into the big bad world, we fear if we will survive and do well. When getting married, we are scared of all the responsibilities and changes it will bring into our lives.

We know things will change, still we somehow expect the next day to be the same as today. We expect the housekeeper, milkman, everyone to be the same as always. But if one of them doesn’t show up, we get upset.

With every birthday, we get upset thinking we’re a year older. We get scared of becoming old, of losing things or people we cherish. But some day it all goes, in the same way that we’ll die one day.

So why is it that we don’t like change inspite of it being inevitable?

Fear of the unknown, fear of losing out on our comfort zone?

But we all know that the only constant thing in this world is change. Then why fight it when we know that we can’t do anything about it? Why not accept change and adjust accordingly and move on?

By accepting, we will be able to tackle it better than wishing it had never happened. If we think we can change something, go ahead and change it. But if we can’t, accept what is not in our hands.

Anitya Bhavana helps us accept and tackle all kinds of changes in life with a balanced mind.

Now keeping this in mind, let’s practice reflection again with Anitya Bhavana at the back of our mind. Let’s see if it makes any difference.

By regular practice of reflection and Anitya Bhavana, there is an automatic understanding that comes, about the impermanence of things. It is not really something we can force ourselves to do or intellectualize. It is a feeling that is generated, a kind of understanding of the changefulness of the material world. This will help us remain in a balanced state of mind always.

So here’s wishing you a Happy, Changeful and Balanced New Year !!

Pinakin & Ankita Shah

Body-Mind Therapists & Trainers

Pristine Senses Academy

                                                                                    

Image courtesy:

http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/change-architect-sign1.jpg