Sore muscles, beat-up joints, tennis elbow, low back pain happen to just about everyone and it is a fact of life for people who train hard with or without weights. The remedy of choice for many, including myself has been ibuprofen in the form of Advil and Motrin. They work and work well for most of the aches and pains but there is a non-pharmaceutical alternative that is available in Europe.

Kytta-Salbe is a product made by pharmaceutical giant, Merck, that wonderful company that brought us Gardasil and Vioxx. That notwithstanding, Merck may have a winner in Kytta-Salbe which is an ointment made from comfrey root extract, a botanical.

Hat tip to my pal, Skip, who is recovering from a swollen knee. Apparently, Kytta-Salbe isn’t available in the US, so Skip’s German-born wife, Ilse is going to try and bring a few tubes back from Germany, which, coincidentally is where she is leaving for today. Here is what Skip found:

In a new study published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers from various German research centers examined the effectiveness of Kytta-Salbe in treating lower back pain.

STUDY PROFILE

* The German team recruited 120 patients with acute upper or lower back pain

* Divided into two groups, subjects were treated with four grams of Kytta-Salbe daily, or a placebo ointment

* Treatment period lasted only five days

* Results showed that pain intensity decreased about 95 percent on average in the Kytta-Salbe group

* Pain intensity decreased less than 38 percent in the placebo group

The authors added that for some subjects the treatment worked very quickly, reducing pain within one hour.

More,

As you might suspect, comfrey root has a long history as a medicinal herb. It’s been used for centuries in Chinese medicine to treat wounds and reduce arthritis pain.

Two years ago another German study tested Kytta-Salbe in a trial whose 220 subjects all suffered from chronic osteoarthritis of the knee. As in the back pain trial, the ointment reduced pain and restored mobility significantly better than placebo.

Kytta-Salbe may be hard to find in the U.S., but it may be ordered from Amazon.com. In fact, two customer reviews on Amazon note that the ointment relieved pain associated with a sprained ankle and tennis elbow. (Latest, says it is not available at Amazon presently).

If you’d like to do an end-run and completely avoid anything made by Merck (after all, they haven’t exactly earned our undying trust), a little Googling will turn up other ointments that use comfrey root as the primary pain relief ingredient.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •

Filed under: Health • Research • Training Tips • Video

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!