Muscle pain is a common complaint that many people face in daily life. Muscle pain and joint pain can be relieved and quality of life can be increased with appropriate treatment methods. Are your muscles, joints, and back pains increasing due to the use of air conditioning in summer? Let’s take a look at the benefits of using bee venom massage cream against muscle pain and joint pain!
What Causes Muscle Pain?
Muscle pain occurs as a result of damage to the muscles. Some situations that may cause muscle pain can be listed as follows: Intense and prolonged exercises, muscle strains, insufficient warming up before exercise and insufficient cooling down after exercise, muscle fatigue seen after prolonged immobility… So how can we get rid of these pains that can happen quite often in daily life?
How to Relieve Muscle Pain?
For those who are curious about how to relieve muscle pain, I am sharing my recommendations aimed at relieving muscle pain under this heading!
Exercise and Stretching: Regular exercise and stretching routines strengthen muscles and increase their flexibility, thus providing protection against muscle pain.
Rest: It is important to give tired muscles sufficient rest time. Excessive exercise should be avoided and time should be given for the body to recover.
Massage Cream: Massage creams used against muscle pain can help relieve muscles and reduce pain. Massage cream should be applied by gently massaging the painful areas.
What Causes Joint Pain?
Joint pain occurs as a result of damage to the tissues in the joints, inflammation or irritation of them. Common causes of joint pain include inflammatory joint diseases like osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as joint injuries that can occur due to falls during sports activities.
How to Relieve Joint Pain?
To alleviate joint pains naturally:
You can support joint health with a healthy diet and increase joint flexibility with regular exercise. Physiotherapist-guided exercises can help reduce joint pain. You can also provide relief by massaging joint areas with massage creams used against joint pain. Bee venom has a natural analgesic effect and can be used in massage creams.
Now let’s discuss which components of bee venom show a pain-relieving effect and how?
The main components of bee venom include melittin, apamin, adolapin and MCD peptides. These components allow bee venom to show an analgesic effect:
• Apamin has an anti-inflammatory effect with the ability to trigger the release of cortisol.
• Adolapin has an anti-rheumatic effect and relieves pain.
• Protease inhibitors show an anti-rheumatic effect by reducing inflammation.
In summary, bee venom contains several components that have been shown to relieve muscle and joint pain through anti-inflammatory and analgesic actions. Using bee venom-infused massage cream could potentially help soothe aches and pains.
In a scientific study conducted in 2014, the effect of bee venom on delayed onset muscle soreness was investigated. The study included 20 female volunteers aged between 21 and 34. All participants were subjected to the eccentric exercise of the biceps brachii muscle, and no further exercise or intervention was applied for the following 24 hours. The participants were randomly divided into two equal groups. The experimental group received a mixture containing bee venom and ultrasound gel in a ratio of 1:9 with a concentration of 0.001%. The control group received pure ultrasound gel. The research assessed the effect of bee venom application on delayed onset muscle soreness, the decrease in pain immediately before exercise and at 24, 48, and 72 hours after exercise, impairment in elbow flexion and extension due to pain, and levels of creatine kinase as an indicator of muscle damage. The study found that the creatine kinase levels were lower in the group receiving bee venom application compared to the control group 72 hours after exercise. It was noted that the decrease in pain and the significant difference in impairment of elbow flexion and extension due to pain were observed after applying the mixture containing bee venom, highlighting its potential effectiveness in managing muscle soreness.
References:
- https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/720151
- Kim, S. K., & Kim, M. C. (2014). The affect on delayed onset muscle soreness recovery for ultrasound with bee venom. Journal of physical therapy science, 26(9), 1419–1421. https://doi.org/10.1589/jpts.26.1419
