Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A little herbal lore and some TMI

Arnica: good for sprains strains and bruises
You don't really want to be injesting this stuff but it is great for external use. I've been using this arnica salve I bought on some bruises I've aquired through purely consentual ways. My boy and I tend to enjoy a rough tumble in the sac now and (more often than) then and I tend to come out a bit marked up. Sometimes these marks are more obvious (huge purple things on the sides of my neck)then others. I've used the arnica salve on a few just to experiment and they seem to clear up alot quicker. I'm thinking about doing an experiment with 2 bruises where one gets the salve and the other doesn't just to see if it actually works as well as I think it does. The way its supposed to work is that arnica causes the bitty capillaries in the skin to dilate where it has been applied. This allows more blood into the area to carry off the escaped blood in cases of bruising, or more blood into an ouchy area to help it heal faster. It sounds to me like it would work better on bruising then sprains and strains but I haven't tried it yet.....maybe i should try it on my tweaky muscle in my neck to see how it works. I have a tweaky muscle when I move my head in certain ways (depending on my stress level) it tweaks causing a sharp pain to go up my neck and usually makes me make a vocal noise of pain. Nothing is more embarassing then sitting down at a fairly quiet table and as you sit your neck tweaks and you gasp out in pain and they all look up at you.
I'll let you know how the experiment goes.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Arnica is seriously one of the best things ever - when I started exercising really intensely I literally could barely hobble for the first few days since my quads were so stiff, and then I found arnica. I had to use it in conjunction with ice and rest, of course, but it definitely helped me be less stiff a lot faster than otherwise. Haven't yet had the opportunity to try it on bruises - or other marks ;P - but I'll definitely keep it around!