A mother, a doctor, and a standard she wouldn't lower.
Why Palma de Salus began with hands, and why it had to begin with her.
Dr. Aradhna didn't set out to build a personal care brand. She set out to hold everyone, her patients, and eventually her own family, to a higher standard of proof.
Trained in biology and doctor of chiropractic care in Canada, she has spent her career treating the whole person, not just the symptom. That same standard follows her into formulation.
It became personal in a new way when she became a mother. Wanting products she could trust completely for her two-year-old son sharpened something she already believed: natural should never mean unproven.
It's a gap she saw everywhere in the category: most “clean beauty” smelled wonderful with no real evidence it did anything more, and most naturopathic products drew on generations of tradition but rarely came with clinical proof behind the claims. Palma de Salus was built to bridge both.
Where the standard comes from.
Trained to look at the whole picture
Biology and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree, both earned in Canada, shaped how she thinks about the body: long-term, whole-person health, not just what's safe to use once.
Naturopathic roots
Her husband's parents built a naturopathic practice more than 30 years ago, treating patients with natural remedies and supplementation ahead of pharmaceuticals, still practicing today, having helped thousands.
A household built on ritual
Two surgeon parents, trained physicians first, who still blended that medical background with the Ayurvedic tradition they grew up with in India: daily ritual at home, clinical rigor at work.
Becoming a mother
Having a son changed the question she was asking: not whether a product was safe to use once, but what years of exposure would actually mean.
A skeptical consumer first
Years spent watching products succeed on packaging and a celebrity name alone, with little evidence they did what they claimed, a standard she later held her own formulas to.
Why hands
We spend years perfecting a face we show for moments at a time: serums, treatments, a decade of anti-aging habit. Hands, which do more work than almost anything else we own, receive almost none of it. They meet the world first, in every season, and for a parent of a young child, they're often the first line of everyday care.
Unlike the face, no one thinks to treat their hands for age. But hands tell the truth. The wrinkles, the tightness, the wear, no matter how well-kept a face is, hands carry the real record of a life. It's why Palma de Salus started with hands, and why the category has stayed the focus ever since.
That standard shaped every formula that followed: plant-based, but proven at the levels it actually takes to work, not just enough for a label. It's the same test Aradhna applies at home: nothing goes into a Palma bottle that she wouldn't put on her own son's hands.
Episode 10: Why Not Her?
Juggling chaos, love, and legacy. Hear Aradhna in her own words.