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My left knee has been hurting lately, probably because of my daily treks between overheated outdoors and overchilled indoors. Last night I tried some of the Lakota pain relief rub that green_trilobite swears by, but either I reacted badly or I used too much, because I woke up at three am with the feeling that my knee was getting a very bad sunburn.
Rinsing with water just made it burn more (should have remembered that green_trilobite uses a shower to reactivated the stuff when it starts to wear off), so I looked at the box. The Lakota had no advice for what to do if the pain rub gave you a chemical burn, but the active ingredients were listed as menthol and capsaicin; I've used lot of products with menthol and never had any trouble, so it was probably the capsaicin - which as hotsauce enthusiasts love to mention, is the chemical that makes chili peppers "hot." Since the usual advice on neutralizing a mouthful of too-spicy food is to down some cold milk, I tried putting some milk on my knee, with moderate sucess.
We were very low on milk, and would need some for breakfast the next morning so I put on some clothes and went across the street to the gas station which has a (mostly) all-night convenience store. I bought a carton of milk and also a little carton of half-and-half, of which I used about a quarter-cup to rinse my burning knee when I got back.
This time it worked like a charm - I don't know if the creamier texture helped, or it contained more casein (the caps-neutralizing ingedient); or whether, since the first milk I used was lactose-reduced, it had had less casein as well. Given that I barely passed high school chemistry, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself, but then I actually did ok at chem as long as it was like cooking or alchemy - this does this, and this mixed with this does *this*. It was when we got down to the atomic level that I ran into trouble.
Anyway the only problem now is that my knee is achy again. Guess I'll pick up some Tiger Balm white (menthol-based) after work, support the Ah Bros' grandkids or whoever it is holds the patent on the stuff nowadays.
Rinsing with water just made it burn more (should have remembered that green_trilobite uses a shower to reactivated the stuff when it starts to wear off), so I looked at the box. The Lakota had no advice for what to do if the pain rub gave you a chemical burn, but the active ingredients were listed as menthol and capsaicin; I've used lot of products with menthol and never had any trouble, so it was probably the capsaicin - which as hotsauce enthusiasts love to mention, is the chemical that makes chili peppers "hot." Since the usual advice on neutralizing a mouthful of too-spicy food is to down some cold milk, I tried putting some milk on my knee, with moderate sucess.
We were very low on milk, and would need some for breakfast the next morning so I put on some clothes and went across the street to the gas station which has a (mostly) all-night convenience store. I bought a carton of milk and also a little carton of half-and-half, of which I used about a quarter-cup to rinse my burning knee when I got back.
This time it worked like a charm - I don't know if the creamier texture helped, or it contained more casein (the caps-neutralizing ingedient); or whether, since the first milk I used was lactose-reduced, it had had less casein as well. Given that I barely passed high school chemistry, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself, but then I actually did ok at chem as long as it was like cooking or alchemy - this does this, and this mixed with this does *this*. It was when we got down to the atomic level that I ran into trouble.
Anyway the only problem now is that my knee is achy again. Guess I'll pick up some Tiger Balm white (menthol-based) after work, support the Ah Bros' grandkids or whoever it is holds the patent on the stuff nowadays.
