We’ve all had a day (or days) at the gym where we just weren’t feeling it and something tweaked in a muscle just the wrong way and got a little sore. If you’re looking for quick soreness and inflammation relief after a workout the Soak Rapid Relief Muscle Spray might be just what you’re seeking.

Soak products are not new to Breaking Muscle readers. This company produces a line of soreness fighting products, and the original bath version was reviewed here previously. Those bath crystals are ideal for delayed onset muscle soreness, but sometimes your needs are more immediate and more localized to some specific muscle. That’s where the spray comes in.

The Soak muscle spray has some unique ingredients over the bath crystals, boasting perhaps a wider array of potential benefits:

• Peppermint, menthol, and eucalyptus – a powerful blend of oils that have been shown to have both topical and olfactory benefits for pain relief, inflammation, antiseptic properties, and more. There are even purported performance enhancing qualities, although the Soak company doesn’t state this themselves.
• Arnica and boswellia – for pain relief and inflammation.
• Emu oil and MSM – both have numerous purported benefits with a focus on joint health. After troubles with FDA approval over health claims, MSM, an industrial solvent, has had mixed results in terms of demonstrated benefits.

I found the Soak spray to be very refreshing, but historically I have been a non-responder to many of its ingredients like arnica. I did find it to be stimulating and to have a small local effect, so even for me it helped to take the edge off of some muscle pain. The cooling effect of the mint and eucalyptus in particular was nice, but ultimately that was its primary effect for me.

I’ve been using the Soak spray for a few months now, and one unexpected but welcomed benefit was as a decongestant (while this is in no way mentioned by the company). When coming off of the winter, I tend to get a stuffy nose. I noticed after using the spray that it actually cleared my sinuses. I wound up using it on more than one occasion for just that purpose. In that regard, I found it highly effective, but I can’t speak for Soak’s intentions on that one.

While many people swear by each individual ingredient, and this is certainly a powerful soreness fighting blend, I’m not sure I saw a major personal benefit. But given how many people might find benefit, I wouldn’t disregard this product. For anyone looking for quick relief from minor muscular pain from a workout this spray is definitely worth tossing into your gym bag for a trial run, in particular if you’ve had success with any of its ingredients in the past.

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Arnicare’s pain relief products offer a natural treatment for pain and injury. There are two methods of taking Arnicare, including arnica tablets and arnica gel. Both products are made from a mountain plant in the daisy family called Arnica montana, which is famous for its spectacular natural healing powers.

Made by Boiron USA and rooted in homeopathic medicine, Arnicare seeks to treat neck, back, shoulder, and leg muscle pain and stiffness. It also treats swelling and bruising.

Embodying the all-natural approach, Arnicare is a product that is extremely user conscious. Arnicare products resonates well with the worldview that everything one could need comes from the earth. Furthermore, the product can relieve any tension around medication and treatment with the fact that both the capsules and gel work without the risk of overdose, contraindications, drug interactions, or side effects.

My personal experience with Arnicare’s products involved the arnica gel. The gel is unscented and surprisingly easy to manage, unlike some of its more messy competitors. After competing in the CrossFit Games Open workout for the week, my hands and shoulders had plenty of room to heal, being full of tears and soreness. I did see a positive adaptation using arnica gel, and I felt safe using it. In fact my days of popping Advil in response to, well, anything is over. Arnicare speaks my all-natural language, and I welcomed it into my routine with open arms.

The capsules seem to imply a bit less acute treatment and more of a general relief, but that could be psychological on my part. Taking the capsules, however, is easy and the taste was at worst redundant, and at best fresh tasting. There are 60 quick dissolving capsules per package. Given that a dosage of two capsules is enough, a box of arnica tablets should last a good while.

The worst thing that could happen with this product, in my opinion, is someone could expect it to be a miracle worker. Though it is an outstanding product, it shouldn’t be leaned on for much more than one would take Advil or Aleve. In that context, I think Arnicare’s line of pain relief products is a bright spot in anyone’s medicine cabinet.

In the all too often over-medicated age we live in, Arnicare may be a small, but significant step towards a more holistic approach to treatment for the everyday injuries, aches, and pains. Replacing products laden with chemicals and foreign substances as well as a collection of countless over-the-counter tablets with Arnicare products would do us all a bit of good, in my opinion.

Find out if Arnicare is available at a store near you.

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Gausha translates directly from Chinese as, “to scrape away fever.” Traditional Chinese Medicine has long believed illnesses such as colds get trapped on the exterior of our bodies where they meet the “troops” of our immune system. This confrontation is why we suffer effects on the exterior of our bodies – when we get colds, we feel them as aches in our necks, headaches, runny noses, and the like. This is in contradiction to an “interior” illness such as liver cancer, that is not going to present itself with watery eyes, sneezing and coughing.

Traditional Chinese Medicine also believes muscle soreness and injuries are in essence traffic jams of blood and qi. “Qi” literally has entire volumes written about it in the form of explanations, but for our purposes, we’ll just call it – energy. Put simply, when you wake up and feel great, you have a lot of qi. When you wake up and feel like you can’t get out of bed, you don’t have a lot of qi.

Whether you believe in qi or not, we’ve all found relief from rubbing an injury or sore muscle – which is clearly promoting an increase in blood flow, thus lessening the pain.

Performing guasha involves taking a spoon or a specific guasha tool and repeatedly rubbing or scraping the tool on the skin over the sore area. In my case, due to my cold, the treatment will be given over my upper back, neck and shoulders. This will also help lessen the soreness I have in those areas as well.

“Sha” is best defined as the red splotches or petechia that appear on the skin from rubbing the spoon or tool repeatedly over the affected area. Blood flow is decreased anytime we have a spasm or injury. Both lactic and uric acid can get trapped underneath the skin or within a bound up muscle due to the lack of drainage caused by the decreased blood flow. One theory is that this metabolic waste turns crystalline and breaking these crystals with the spoon or guasha tool can lead to microscopic trauma to blood vessels. Signs of these metabolic waste products being released into the tissue become evident in the form of sha. This sha is a positive sign for an initial treatment as it lets you know changes are happening in the underlying muscle tissue and fascia.

After an acute illness or injury the amount of redness, or sha, will be heavy post treatment. It may even appear there is bruising to the area. This bruising and redness will decrease over time. Repeated treatments will illicit less and less of the sha with each session. This gives us insight into the fact that something is being released and then cleared out from the area and is seen as another positive sign. The lessening of the sha should also be accompanied by a significant decrease in symptoms.

The real benefit of a guasha treatment is two-fold:

• First, there’s a marked decrease in pain.
• Second, and more important to the layperson, this treatment does not need to be done by a licensed professional nor with any specific device for it to be effective.

Anyone in your house or on your team can scrape a ceramic spoon over your upper traps, neck, and back. Focusing on these areas is especially effective during cold and flu season given the relationship of the acupuncture points that lie in that region.

Give this treatment a shot next time you are bound up from a hard workout involving any major pulling movements as well as the next time you find yourself reaching for some hot chicken soup and the box of tissues.

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One of the best products that I have at my disposal is the Pain Terminator Infrared Herbal Patch (also available in a cream) from Golden Sunshine Inc. Even though the name is a mouthful, the patch is a life-saver.

With ingredients such as frankincense and myrrh you know that this product is fit not only for the King of Kings, but for us lowly CrossFitters as well!

The five patches included in the package are roughly 4” by 3” and can easily be cut in half to fit onto a variety of ailing areas. I’ve used them everywhere from the soles of feet, to the backs of necks, and everywhere in between. The directions advise to keep each patch on for up to eight hours, however I have personally left them on for 24 hours without them beginning to peal off. The patches will even survive a trip through the shower.

The herbal ingredient list on the back gives us some insight into why this patch is so effective in relieving pain and healing injuries. The vast majority of the herbs fall into the Chinese Medicine category of “blood movers”- including the biblical ones listed above.

Chinese Medicine views the root of pain and injury to be due primarily to a “traffic jam” of blood and fluid. This pooling of stagnant blood is what gives us the purple appearance of bruises as well as swelling associated with strains and sprains. Relieving this traffic jam is the first step towards healing and returning a muscle or tendon to its proper, pain-free function.

Herbs contained in the Pain Terminator Patch such as Paeoniae Veitchi Radix, Angelica Sinensis Radix, Carthami Flos, and others increase circulation to the affected area, bringing in freshly oxygenated blood to the damaged tissues and muscle.

Herbs such as Drynariae Rhizoma are commonly prescribed both internally and externally to help heal damaged bones and ligaments. Ligustiei Rhizoma is commonly prescribed for any type of headache, also showing its powerful pain relieving properties.

Most of today’s topical pain creams and patches do not contain any of the herbs listed above (nor any of the others used) therefore limiting their efficacy. I prescribe the vast majority of the herbs in the Pain Terminator Patch to patients to take internally for pain and injury and therefore was extremely pleased to find a product that also contained them in an easy use patch for external application.

The patches do have a slight medicinal and herbal smell, but nothing that is stronger than your typical topical analgesic such as Ben Gay.

Pain Terminator Patches sell online for $7.79 or in bulk , or they can be purchased from a licensed acupuncturist or health food store.

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