BY DR. ARNAN SISSON

August 28th, 2023

There’s a lot of folks out there that have some sort of ache or pain and use biofreeze, heat, or ice. And I will admit these tools can be fairly useless if not used properly. There is a big misconception out there that they can completely wipe out pain by themselves. While this isn’t true, if their used in conjunction with something else they can actually be effective at getting folks off the medication, back to exercise, and just back to enjoying life again like they used to.

So, before we go over how to use these tools correctly, lets go over how they affect you. It’s a pretty simple mechanism. Think about this scenario, your hammering a nail and all of a sudden, your aim isn’t the greatest and “pop” you hit your thumb.

The first thing you do aside from some choice words is to grab the thumb and squeeze it. It’s somewhat of a reflex. The crazy thing though is that by putting pressure to the thumb the pain goes down a little bit.

The pressure sensation your producing through the thumb is in a way over riding the pain sensation. This is a similar mechanism to that of the biofreeze, ice, or heat. It over rides the pain temporarily. But that’s the important part…its only temporarily.

So, you may be thinking these tools may be useless if they only produce their effect for a short period. But when you know this fact you can learn to use them correctly.

Biofreeze, heat, and ice should be used primarily to do one thing…that’s increase activity. Studies have shown over and over again that gradually increasing activity with neck, back, knee, or even thumb pain can lead to recovery!

But here’s the cool part, if we know that the above tools can lessen pain; even if its just in the short term. We can use them to allow us to do more activity. This in turn leads to us losing the medication and getting back to our daily walks or family vacations that much faster.

So that’s It for today, just remember that by themselves biofreeze, heat, and ice can be ineffective. But when used in conjunction with increasing activity levels they can work extremely well.

That’s it for today, remember movement is medicine!

P.S. Are you looking to cut down on stress and anxiety levels? Or even find a fun way to get healthier? If so you may want to try out our at home massage service. This is a completely new service we’ve decided to launch where we send out our head massage therapist to you, and she’ll perform a full Swedish or Therapeutic massage in the comfort of your own home.

This service is mainly for two types of folks. People that are having a hard time getting out of their homes. Or just people that have a very busy schedule and would like the convenience of an at home massage. If this sounds like a service you’d enjoy, then feel free to give us a call at (804) 493-0002 to get a free massage consultation. During the consultation we can determine if you’re a good fit for our service and what sort of massage would produce the largest effect.