Deep Heat

Lil' Smiler

Hi All,

Just wondering what your opinions would be on Deep Heat?

I have a lot of clients that will come to me for Sports Injuries and say that they've been using deep heat on their injury.

How does everyone find it? Personally, I'm not a huge fan of it, love the smell and the sensation that the menthol and eucalpytus create but aside from that I don't see any big relief from it. Would appreciate if anyone had any articles on it and it's effects/benefits etc

spdmrphy

Deep heat. It's pretty good I must say, although as a pharmacist I have my doubts as to whether this is due to a physiological response to the ingredients, or something else. The act of rubbing any cream in to the injured part alone will be beneficial because it will help stimulate blood flow in the area. The smell is nice, and the heat sensation will certainly give you the impression that it is a doing something, giving you a pretty nice placebo effect as well (which is not something to be ignored when treating minor ailments).The methyl salicylate in deep heat will give a localised analgesic effect to a certain extent (this is a methylated derivative of Aspirin [aka salicylic acid] and technically falls into the same class of drug as ibuprofen/Nurofen, diclofenac/Voltarol, ketoprofen/Oruvail, but it is by far the least potent drug in the class with regards to topical pain relief). Personally I go for tiger balm. I prefer the camphor and clove smell and I find it gives a greater sensation of heat. Out of the Voltarol/Nurofen/Oruvail products - Oruvail gives the best pharmacological response.

RobFowl

Deep heat mostly acts as a "counter irritant" ie its masks the underlying pain by the warm sensation it gives off. Nothing wrong with that and I often use it myself but it won,t make any difference to healing times.