Assessing Your Health
There are many areas of the hand that you can look at in order to assess your health. First, let's look at the most obvious signs — temperature, color, texture, and musculature of the hand. All of these, if studied together, can give you a good idea of the basic state of a person's health.
Just as our health is largely determined by the physiologies we inherit from our ancestors, so are our fingerprints — and handprints. Handprints for the members of a family share many common features and characteristics. By looking at similarities in the hand, you can trace similarities of character, personality, or interest.
Coloring and Temperature
The palms should be pinkish in persons of all races. Pale skin and pale creases can mean that the person is in an extremely worrisome situation or else lacks iron, perhaps, in the case of women, due to particularly heavy menstruation. A reddish cast over the outside of the palm may mean that a woman is pregnant, while yellowish hands can mean a liver disease or else a diet that is heavy in carrots.
“Cold hands, warm heart” is not always the case. A person with cold hands may have circulatory problems, and if the hand is both cold and damp, they may be worried or suffer from insomnia. The best evidence of allergies and circulatory problems comes in the form of islands, grilles, and vertical lines along the three major lines of the hands. Cold, pale hands also indicate lack of energy.
With very cold hands, look for a bluish color on the nails that signifies poor circulation. Hands that are warm and bluish also indicate poor circulation and pulmonary problems, and perhaps even a negative reaction to a drug.
Very red skin on the hands can mean circulatory problems that include high blood pressure or diabetes. Hot, red hands can mean rheumatic fever, gout, or a glandular problem, or they can indicate an angry temperament.
It is important to note that what you see in the hand is only an indication that you are vulnerable in a certain area. It does not mean that you have a particular disease or condition — it may be there as a warning.
The Texture of the Skin
Skin texture is important because it is controlled by the hormones, the chemicals produced by the endocrine system, which controls such personality-related traits as mood swings. In general, soft and fine skin means the person is sensitive and vulnerable, while coarser skin means that he or she is robust and protected from disease.
Skin texture can also indicate specific health problems. Dry and rough skin is a warning of an underactive thyroid, while smooth and satiny hands show an overactive thyroid, as do soft and pudgy fingers.
Minor hand lines are often the result of stress and worry, which in turn can cause disease. Oddly, the fewer lines appear on your hand, the more balanced, peaceful, and healthy you are.
Muscle Elasticity
You can also learn a lot about your health simply by examining how your hands feel — whether they have good musculature and are elastic. If they are, you are likely able to resist illness; when you do get sick, you recover quickly. Incidentally, people with elastic hands are generally adaptable to new ideas and unanticipated problems.
A soft and doughy feeling to the hand's fleshy parts means a similar softness, a lack of resilience, in the physical constitution. People with soft hands are often too indulgent when it comes to eating, drinking, resting, and sex. This is particularly the case in people with thick hands. People with thin and weak hands tend to lack vitality and endurance and they are prone to illness and nutritional problems.
A rigid hand with mounts that are hard and inflexible means that the owner of the hand is rigid and unyielding as well. This characteristic shows that the person might eventually develop stress-related physical problems such as cardiovascular difficulties, back pain, headaches, and ulcers that are caused by holding in emotions and stored energies. These people need to find healthy outlets for their emotions, such as exercise.
To test your muscular consistency, try this: Make a fist of your hand and press your thumb against your Apollo finger. Look at the muscle behind your thumb. If it is firm, your ability to withstand illness is probably good. If it is soft, you may be low in energy. If this muscle appears to be atrophying, it could mean you have diabetes.
