Back in the early 90s, the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons enjoyed a resurgence of popularity. My dad found them amusing, so we all got a healthy dose of “Dudley Do-Right” and “Boris and Natasha” for a few years. One of my favorite scenes was when Bullwinkle, a rather dim-witted moose, would try to do a magic trick and would start with the line “Nothin’ up my sleeve!”
This nonsense appealed to my warped sense of humor, as you can well imagine.
At any rate, I thought I’d start a little regular post of home remedies and “tricks” we’ve picked up here in all the living we’ve done at the House of Vitafam.
For my first trick, I’d like to tell you about something called Arnica. You can buy it in gel form, pill form, oil… the possibilities are endless. It’s a homeopathic remedy, but it actually WORKS. It reduces bruising and swelling like a champ. And with our gang, you can be certain we see lots of attempts to bruise and swell.
I buy the Arnica in a tube of gel. It’s nice and cool but doesn’t sting or burn when I rub it on a boo-boo. (I actually use it often for those many “fake boo-boos” that someone imagines to have gotten because it doesn’t do them any harm to rub on the skin.) If someone gets conked on the head and looks to get a nice goose-egg, I rub a bit of that on the bump and usually the goose-egg disappears.
People are always falling down the stairs at the house, myself included, and Arnica is our go-to remedy of choice for any injuries sustained while hurtling toward the ground. The other day, I dropped my mixing bowl from my bread mixer (which is huge and heavy) on my ankle. I rubbed a bit of Arnica on it and pretty soon, Andrew couldn’t even see the injury I was whining about. So I guess that’s actually a failing of the product. You can’t talk about battle wounds when no one can see them.
I keep a tube of Arnica in my purse, in the van, in the kitchen, and in the medicine cabinet. And it gets used in all four places. I also tend to buy an extra tube or two to hand out to friends and neighbors when their children get hurt while playing with my gang. (I swear we’re not violent, we’re just accident prone.) I’m convinced any mother of boys ought to have a tube in every corner of the house.
I can’t tell you exactly why it works, because this isn’t that kind of a blog, I can only tell you that it DOES work. According to wikipedia, it’s made from a part of the sunflower, so that’s a happy thought. Maybe next time someone falls down the stairs (i.e. tomorrow) I can tell my kids that not only are they getting a magic kiss from Mommy, but they’re getting a get-well kiss from a sunflower, too.
Or maybe I can just smear some Arnica on it, slap ‘em on the butt, and tell them to “shake it off” like I always do.
This is NOT a sponsored post. Nor am I a medical professional of any sort. So please do not ask me how to cure your boils. I’m just an experienced mom with an opinion. And very ungraceful children.
9.22.2009
After hearing people rave about how amazing it was for bruises, I bought a tube recently, because our very busy 18 month old monkey, er, son, loves stairs, chairs, and standing on his block bucket, all of which invariably end up with him falling on his sweet head. I have yet to have a big owie to use it on, not that I’m complaining… it’ll happen soon enough.
9.23.2009
Very disappointed to learn you’re not going to help us with our boils.
9.23.2009
Never seen that before. I’ll have to look at getting that. For bruises around our house, we use witch hazel in the form of Tucks pads. We always have those around since I keep having children so frequently. It works great if you put it on as soon as a child gets a boo-boo. Some owies, however, are beyond repair, like when Zoe decided to walk through the wall via the door frame or when Josiah got head butted by his brother and sported a black eye (through vacation no less). But most owies can go away with witch hazel. Maybe Arnica can help the very big bruises!
9.23.2009
I’ll second the Arnica! We couldn’t survive without it! I even carry a tube around when we travel. =)
Once I got some on my lip after doctoring a boo boo and my lip went slightly numb. And you are right, bruises and goose eggs disappear almost immediately with arnica for us too!!
9.23.2009
This I have never heard about. I’m nothing but intrigued and WILL be checking it out. Our oldest sports an accident history, our middle’s nickname is “Crash”, and the third one tries to keep up with both of them. Sounds like this could be my new Windex.
9.23.2009
I’ll have to order some of that…Eli tried to take out our fence with his head today…big, big, goose egg!
9.27.2009
[...] Little People managed not to break anything and we only had on injury. But I had Arnica on hand for the bruise and ice at the ready for the bloody lip. In our book, that counts as a [...]
10.4.2009
[...] I had my vast exposure to Rocky and Bullwinkle videos to draw on. And nothing says “authentic Russian [...]
2.22.2010
[...] Larry and Moe routine with his brother. Miraculously, Ian wasn’t that mad at Sam. I applied Arnica and soothed ruffled feathers before I booted them back [...]