In this video I'm going to give you my honest physical therapist review of Ben gay Ultra
strength pain cream. Ben gay is a water-based cream with the main active ingredients being
camphor, methylselas, Silents and menthol Ben gays marketed for use with muscle aches and joint pain.
My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I'm a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual
physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile.
While avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and pain medications. We make videos with advice tips,
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Now before I take this out and show you exactly how to apply it in your skin,
which is pretty straightforward, but there's a few things to note. Let's just talk about
the active ingredients. You can see on the back there let me get the lighting better.
We got camp for menthol and methyl cell asylees, which I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Campers up 4% mentals at 10% and methyl cell asylee is 30%. Now camp four is the main active
ingredients in Tiger Balm as well. So what I like about being gay is it combines several
main active ingredients to make it actually quite powerful. And this ultra-strength version of it is
a little more powerful than obviously the main one. Now camp four comes from a camphor tree.
It's a derivative of the component in the camphor tree and it's broken down and distilled down into
camphor oil. And that's what they put in Ben gay. Now menthol comes from the mint plants. It's also
broken down in this substance, mental mental, is what gives mint it's odor and the feeling where it
kind of tingles or burns on your skin a bit. And that's also put in here, methyl cela cyl eight
comes from the winter green plant. And there's confusion during my research as to whether this
is really derivative of the wintergreen plants or if it's made in a lab, because it seems like they
have come up with a way to make up methyl cell asylee. It's in a lab. So it's an artificial
version of it. So I'm not 100% on whether this is 100% natural as far as all the main active
ingredients go. Or if methyl salicylates is one of the ingredients that is made up in by
scientists and put into this. Now what you need to know about methyl selas silence is it has been
connected to overdoses that have led to deaths, especially in athletes that have just put on way
too much Ben gay. Now, I don't think those people were following the instructions on the back here,
which I'll detail for you in just a minute. But make sure that you're following the instructions.
And if you have pain that lasts longer than the timeframes they talk about on any pain cream, you
need to go see a doctor go get some help figure out what the root problem of your discomfort is,
so that you're not in trouble or putting yourself at risk for something more serious as a side
effect from even over the counter pain creams. Now, that being said, it's not like people are
dying left and right from use of Ben gates actually a very widely used product that has
tons of benefit for pain relief in the short term. And the side effects of it are probably a lot less
damaging than medications that you take by mouth even over the counter medications because they're
not getting all the way down into your organs as quickly as a mouth medication would get.
As far as research goes. I've linked research articles for each of the main active ingredients
down in the description in case you're that nerd that likes to look at all the research stuff.
What you need to know about the research is I have not found any research that combines all three
main active ingredients as a formula used for pain relief, but I have found research studies for each
of the main active ingredients as showing that it is effective each of the ingredients are effective
towards relieving pain in the short term. But as a group us together the way that Ben
gay formulates its product, I have not found any research. But you can kind of assume that if each
of the individual chemicals can help to reduce pain, then probably all the mix together is going
to be more effective. And as a physical therapist working with patients that have used this product,
they all say that it's pretty effective. I've yet to meet a patient that has said
that Ben gay Ultra strength didn't edge the pain a little bit you know, take the edge off,
make them sleep a little better at night or get through the day a little bit better
without having to ingest or take by mouth a pain medication and your main side effect of Ben gay
is going to be skin redness. If you have some allergy or reaction to any of the ingredients in
been gay then you might I immediately get a rash like appearance on the area that you put it on,
or just some skin irritation, skin redness. And if that's the case, and you want to immediately
stop using Ben gay, and talk to your doctor about your pain first, or find some other way to get
some pain relief that says on the box that this is not for use with children 12 years and under.
And of course, you should not be putting this on any body parts that don't have a muscle or joint
on them. So make sure you're putting it on your arms, your legs, you can put it on your torso,
anywhere that you've got muscles and joints on your neck is fine, and your back is fine as well,
you absolutely should not put this into your body in any way you shouldn't ingest this,
this should not go in your eyes, it will burn tremendously. So be careful that once you've
applied this on yourself that you go wash your hands. So you don't accidentally rub your eye
or stick your finger in your nose or your mouth or ears, something like that or any other body part,
that could be a very irritating experience for yourself. So now let's get into using
the product itself, I'm going to open it, this is a brand new one right here.
So you can see the unboxing of this. And there's the tube of Ben gay Ultra strength
pain cream. And on the back, we've got all the same label as we've got in the back of the box,
as well the uses directions. And the directions say to just apply some it doesn't say exactly
how much but apply it to the affected area. And it says not more than three to four times
a day. And after seven days, if you still are having problems, you need to go talk
to your doctor. So there's the limit on how to use this. Now there's no like, special
cap to remove there. So that's kind of nice, I like that. But at the same time kind of thinking,
Well, you know how sealed is this, but it was sealed in the box. So I know this wasn't tampered
with at all. And I like that it's got this two way cap. So you can unscrew it and get the little tube
to go out that way. Or you can just flip the top and get it to come out that way, as well.
And it's water based. So that just means it should all evaporate from your skin. So there's
the cream there, it looks just like a lotion, and it's got a strong old odor because of the camphor
and the use of active ingredients methyl methyl cell asylee. So you're going to smell like this
stuff, you know, once you put it on, but that's okay, you know, if you're dealing with a problem,
then it is what it is. So you would just rub it into your body part that you have this and just
make sure that it goes away that it is absorbed by your skin that's to try to do there. So once
you rub it in, and when I say rub it in, you got to rub can almost massage the skin in the area
and let it penetrate all the way. And you saw how much I put out it was just a dollop it was,
you know not more than it was less than an inch for sure, maybe half an inch length of what came
out of the tube. And there you go. So I've got just a little bit on my hand and a little bit
on my skin. So what we need to do next is go wash my hands so that I don't accidentally
rub my eye or anything else and get this often. You know, I like the odor. It's kind of minty,
some people really don't like it. Some people don't mind it at all. If you're dealing with any
sort of pain or ache, it makes a difference for sure. And like the direction so you might need to
put this on a third or fourth time throughout the day, just don't go past that amount. And if you're
still dealing with problems after seven days, you have to stop. Now let me give you my honest
physical therapists review of this product. Now if you're in a lot of pain, if you're dealing with
back spasms, arthritis pain, like knee arthritis, hip arthritis, if you're dealing with foot,
wrist hand pain, especially in the arms and legs, this stuff penetrates pretty well as
you saw my wrist here, you know skin tends to be a little thinner on your on your wrists,
hands, ankle and feet. So it penetrates extremely well in that area. And you instantly I mean within
a minute or so start feeling the little numbing effects, a little tingly effects of it, and it
changes the sensation that you're getting into the area and makes it feel a little bit better.
Now you just have to have a clear understanding that this is not going to solve your problem.
If you've got arthritis, for instance, it's not fixing arthritis, it's just taking the edge off
so that you can get a little more comfortable and maybe sleep better or rest a bit so that you're
not in constant pain and in constant discomfort, especially like this if you have any sort of
stomach reactions to like ibuprofen, any sort of NSAID nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drug, this does technically have an incident at the methyl selesai late is classified as an NSAID.
But this doesn't go into your stomach right away, technically can circulate around your system,
but the dosage is relatively low compared to taking ibuprofen. And that goes directly
into your stomach. So it can really irritate it, if you've got a reaction to ibuprofen.
So overall, I like it, it's just not a good long-term thing. It's a short-term thing. You
know, if you sprain something, if you just take a bad fall, or you wake up stuck in your back or
joint somehow, this could be something to get you through until you can see the doctor or until that
spring can just calm down so that you're not in constant pain, I would definitely recommend
keeping this in your medicine cabinet or wherever you keep some medications. As an alternative, I
would put it right next to the Tylenol, ibuprofen and consider using this first if possible,
so that you don't have to take a pain medication by mouth. Now, one thing I didn't mention that I
don't want to forget is you can't put this on open wounds. So if you scraped yourself,
you cut yourself somehow, this is not something you're going to use you just you're going to have
to suck it up or consider taking by mouth pain medication, if your pain is that bad.
And if you're looking for other alternatives for pain creams, we've reviewed several here on
our channel. If you go down into the description below and find our products, reviews, playlists,
you'll find other creams that we reviewed. We reviewed stuff like blue emu, Biofreeze, Voltaren,
there's a bunch of other ones in addition to other products that we reviewed on here for pain relief.
Go check those out so you can learn more and see which one
is best for you. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video. Bye bye