Intro­duc­tion:

There are many ques­tions won­der­ing on what and how herbal packs work.  Is it the heat or cool­ing effects on the appli­ca­tion caused the heal­ing or the actual nat­ural ingre­di­ents inside the pack are the sooth­ing ele­ments to the pains?

If the heat or cool­ing ele­ments are the essence, why do we have to pay such a price for the prod­ucts?  Are the scents really impor­tant dur­ing treatments?

What is Herbal Pack?

Herbal pack is a prod­uct which is filled with nat­ural herbs and pur­posely design to pro­vide pain relief and ele­vate dis­com­fort due to typ­i­cal mus­cle stiff­ness.  Depend­ing on the man­u­fac­tur­ers, the fill­ing ingre­di­ents and ratio com­po­si­tion of the herbs may vary from one to oth­ers.  There is no offi­cial guide­lines on this mat­ter and is not being reviewed by FDA or other inter­na­tional drug/ med­ical institutes.

There are hun­dreds or prob­a­bly thou­sands of dif­fer­ent designs, shape, and fill­ing ingre­di­ents of this prod­uct.  Cer­tain design may serve spe­cific loca­tion of your body, while the rec­tan­gu­lar pil­low shape are com­monly per­ceived as uni­ver­sal product.

How to choose the good one?

1. Con­sider the condition(s) that you wish to treat. Herbal packs come in a vari­ety of sizes and shapes includ­ing those designed for the face/eyes, shoul­ders and neck, and larger areas such as the back or stomach.
2. Learn the fill­ing prop­er­ties of dif­fer­ent herbs for max­i­mum ben­e­fit.  Do not just judge the prod­ucts  sim­ply by the fra­grances that you enjoy. A sam­ple of herbs designed to relax mus­cles or reduce inflam­ma­tion include chamomile, laven­der, pep­per­mint and cin­na­mon.  It is also essen­tial to know if there are heat­ing ele­ment on the blends, such as wheat & flax seeds.  Pep­per­mint & spearmint are another pop­u­lar choice that may be an addi­tional ben­e­fit to sinus conditions.
3. Look for 100 per­cent nat­ural ingre­di­ents in an aro­mather­apy herbal pack. Nat­ural ingre­di­ents should offer supe­rior aro­mather­apy ben­e­fits and often bet­ter heat retention.
4. Find an herbal pack that offers a remov­able cover. You may find the ben­e­fits of easy clean­ing upon usages or shar­ing the packs with oth­ers.  Also,natural packs are prone to inter­nal and exter­nal mold and mildew growth.  There­fore, you have to dili­gently store the packs in the  freezer inside the sealed plas­tic bag.
5. Iden­tify the prod­uct claim with regards to heat reten­tion, which should be at least 30 min­utes for best results. Opti­mally, look for herbal packs which con­tain flax seeds and wheat as the main filler. Flax seeds and wheat are reputed to have supe­rior heat reten­tion over rice/ corn and most other fillers. The excep­tion is facial packs, which require more com­fort and cool­ing therapy.
6. Look for designs for your spe­cific are of treat­ments.  They have to be com­fort­able, easy to use and covenience.

What are the uses of herbal pack?

It will gen­tly help in reliev­ing pain, stiff­ness, and ten­sion. If you have pain or dis­com­fort from stress or sinus prob­lems then you have to try one of these. The pur­pose of these herbal packs is to con­cen­trate the heal­ing effects by com­bin­ing heat­ing and/ or cool­ing effects on spe­cific parts of the body.

Can it really work?

Accord­ing to Vert Mooney, MD. Heat ther­apy appli­ca­tion can help pro­vide lower back pain relief through sev­eral mechanisms:

• Heat ther­apy dilates the blood ves­sels of the mus­cles sur­round­ing the lum­bar spine. This process increases the flow of oxy­gen and nutri­ents to the mus­cles, help­ing to heal the dam­aged tissue.
• Heat stim­u­lates the sen­sory recep­tors in the skin, which means that apply­ing heat to the lower back will decrease trans­mis­sions of pain sig­nals to the brain and par­tially relieve the discomfort.
• Heat appli­ca­tion facil­i­tates stretch­ing the soft tis­sues around the spine, includ­ing mus­cles, con­nec­tive tis­sue, and adhe­sions. Con­se­quently, with heat ther­apy, there will be a decrease in stiff­ness as well as injury, with an increase in flex­i­bil­ity and over­all feel­ing of com­fort. Flex­i­bil­ity is very impor­tant for a healthy back.

Ok, We know that heat ther­apy can relief pain, stiff­ness and pain. So what are the ben­e­fits using herbal pack then other method such as massage?

Just 2 rea­sons. One is easy to do. You can put the herbal pack while sleep­ing or while at work or in the car. And the other one is cheaper than tak­ing a pro­fes­sional massage.

Tips and Warn­ings when buy­ing Aro­mather­apy Herb Pack

• Look for an aro­mather­apy herbal pack that serves dou­ble duty as an ice pack if cold ther­apy is needed.
• Be cau­tious when tak­ing a heated aro­mather­apy herbal pack out of the microwave and avoid overheating.

How to use it to get the max­i­mum benefit?

You should check the tem­per­a­ture. It should be warm enough to relief your pain but don’t get your skin burn­ing! You can use enough insu­la­tion in between.

The longer the prod­ucts applied is the bet­ter. For a very minor treat­ment you can use for 15 to 20 min­utes. But for more intense injury you can use longer from 30 min­utes to 2 hours.

A spe­cific type of prod­ucts may feel bet­ter for one per­son than for another, It’s bet­ter for you to fig­ure it out your­self which one works best.

Avoid aro­mather­apy herb pack when you have fol­low­ing disease.

Please note that herbal pack should not be used in cer­tain cir­cum­stances. For exam­ple, if area is swollen or bruised, heat should not be used. Heat appli­ca­tion is also not suit­able in the fol­low­ing cases:

• Der­mati­tis
• Deep vein thrombosis
• Dia­betes
• Periph­eral vas­cu­lar disease
• Open wound
• Severe cog­ni­tive impairment

Patients should con­sult doc­tors if they have heart dis­ease or hypertension.

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While the over­all qual­i­ties of warmth and heat have long been asso­ci­ated with com­fort and relax­ation, heat ther­apy goes a step fur­ther and can pro­vide both pain relief and heal­ing ben­e­fits for many types of lower back pain.

In addi­tion, heat ther­apy for lower back pain — in the form of heat­ing pads, heat wraps — is both inex­pen­sive and easy to do.

This arti­cle pro­vides an exam­i­na­tion of how heat ther­apy inter­acts with the body to alle­vi­ate pain as well as options on how to apply heat ther­apy to help alle­vi­ate many types of lower back pain.

How heat ther­apy works

Many episodes of lower back pain result from strains and over-exertions, cre­at­ing ten­sion in the mus­cles and soft tis­sues around the lower spine. As a result, this restricts proper cir­cu­la­tion and sends pain sig­nals to the brain.

Mus­cle spasm in the lower back can cre­ate sen­sa­tions that may range from mild dis­com­fort to excru­ci­at­ing lower back pain. Heat ther­apy can help relieve pain from the mus­cle spasm and related tight­ness in the lower back.

Heat ther­apy appli­ca­tion can help pro­vide lower back pain relief through sev­eral mechanisms:

• Heat ther­apy dilates the blood ves­sels of the mus­cles sur­round­ing the lum­bar spine. This process increases the flow of oxy­gen and nutri­ents to the mus­cles, help­ing to heal the dam­aged tissue.
• Heat stim­u­lates the sen­sory recep­tors in the skin, which means that apply­ing heat to the lower back will decrease trans­mis­sions of pain sig­nals to the brain and par­tially relieve the discomfort.
• Heat appli­ca­tion facil­i­tates stretch­ing the soft tis­sues around the spine, includ­ing mus­cles, con­nec­tive tis­sue, and adhe­sion. Con­se­quently, with heat ther­apy, there will be a decrease in stiff­ness as well as injury, with an increase in flex­i­bil­ity and over­all feel­ing of com­fort. Flex­i­bil­ity is very impor­tant for a healthy back.

There are sev­eral other sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits of heat ther­apy that make it so appeal­ing. Com­pared to most ther­a­pies, heat ther­apy is quite inex­pen­sive (and in many cir­cum­stances it’s free — such as tak­ing a hot bath). Heat ther­apy is also easy to do — it can be done at home while relax­ing, and portable heat wraps also make it an option while at work or in the car.

For many peo­ple, heat ther­apy works best when com­bined with other treat­ment modal­i­ties, such as phys­i­cal ther­apy and exer­cise. Rel­a­tive to most med­ical treat­ments avail­able, heat ther­apy is appeal­ing to many peo­ple because it is a non-invasive and non-pharmaceutical form of lower back pain relief.

How to Apply Heat Therapy

The most effec­tive heat ther­apy prod­ucts are the ones that can main­tain their heat at the proper tem­per­a­ture. “Warm” is the proper tem­per­a­ture. Patients should not have their heat source be hot to the point of burn­ing the skin. The desired effect is for the heat to pen­e­trate down into the mus­cles. Sim­ply increas­ing the tem­per­a­ture of the skin will do lit­tle to decrease discomfort.

In many instances, the longer the heat is applied, the bet­ter. The dura­tion that one needs to apply the heat, though, is based on the type of and/or mag­ni­tude of the injury. For very minor back ten­sion, short amounts of heat ther­apy may be suf­fi­cient (such as 15 to 20 min­utes). For more intense injuries, longer ses­sions of heat may be more ben­e­fi­cial (such as 30 min­utes to 2 hours, or more).

Two options of heat ther­apy include moist heat and dry heat.

• Dry heat, such as elec­tric heat­ing pads and saunas, draw out mois­ture from the body and may leave the skin dehy­drated. How­ever, some peo­ple feel that dry heat is the eas­i­est to apply and feels the best.

• Moist heat, such as hot baths, steamed tow­els or moist heat­ing packs can aid in the heat’s pen­e­tra­tion into the mus­cles, and some peo­ple feel that moist heat pro­vides bet­ter pain relief.

A spe­cific type of heat ther­apy may feel bet­ter for one per­son than for another, and it may require some exper­i­men­ta­tion to fig­ure out which one works best. There are many dif­fer­ent man­ners for heat to be applied to the lower back.  How­ever, I like to rec­om­mend the one, which I had expe­ri­enced and known.  It is Nature Cre­ation — The nat­ural Hot & Cold Herbal Ther­apy products.

Nature Cre­ation (www.naturecreation.com) is the ulti­mate nat­ural hot & cold pain ther­apy prod­ucts.  They hava vari­ety of designs to fit com­fort­ably to the shape of your body and main­taina the heat or cold effects through out the treat­ments.  The effects of the heal­ing is almost instan­te­nous.  Within 10–15 min­utes upon the treat­ments, you will feel the absolute relieve from your pain.

You may visit its com­pany web­site at www.naturecreation.com or call their friendly cus­tomer ser­vice at 1–888-250‑2010 ext., 101.

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