Arnica for bruising?

[Ming Yue]

In class we are preparing for an upcoming seminar where we will be doing lots of 2-man hand drills. We're doing pretty serious forearm conditioning in almost every class.

I am fair skinned and bruise easily. My forearms look like I rolled them in black and brown paint. :eek: I use good jow 2x a day and that's helping, but I wish to continue to condition them and I've got to heal my bruising as much as possible between classes.

I've heard arnica is good. I believe it's a component of my dit da jow, but has anyone heard about applying it directly to the skin, like a compress? any other advice?

TIA
C

[fragbot]

Originally posted by Ming Yue

I've heard arnica is good. I believe it's a component of my dit da jow, but has anyone heard about applying it directly to the skin, like a compress? any other advice?


I was interested in this topic awhile ago. Even though it's oft-touted as speeding healing, I was unable to find any research that showed it sped healing at all. Somewhere on the net, there's a link to a guy who did a literature survey of the research on arnica. Bottom line: it's likely to be useless.

That being said, I did find two things that *did* appear to speed the healing of bruises--papain and bromelain. However, they also appear to increase clotting time which is a downside for people who train with any sort of contact.

[Ming Yue]

do you take that regularly (preventative?) or just when you know you will be training hard?

[Ming Yue]

interesting...

thanks tony, that's probably one of the clearest explanations of homeopathic method I've heard.

I will ask my TCM practicioner about that.

much appreciated!