I've been saving these tips for a while and finally have all the photos to show what I'm talking about. Please share these tips with anyone you feel could use them. To Our Health!!

 

CASTOR OIL & HOT/COLD THERAPY ADVICE

Hot/Cold therapy, I’m convinced, is perhaps one of the most important protocols you can integrate to your life. But it sounds tough, being able to sit still, take time out and do it right. I’ve been perfecting this over the last few months and here’s what I’ve learned. I haven’t found rice or corn bags to get as hot as I’d like for hot/cold therapy. I love the idea (being all green and stuff) but I’m gonna get back to that project of creating the perfect green hot pad later. I’ve gone through many ways of heating up the packs and I found that using a slow cooker works best. I have an old slow cooker/crockpot on the dresser near my bed, at bed height. When I wanna do hot packs I boil the water first. Trying to wait for the slow cooker to get the water hot enough to keep hot packs warm over time – is – well – s.l.o.w. What’s in a name, eh? I turn the slow cooker on and once my water on the stove is hot – I pour it in the cooker. The outside is already warm so getting to that temp quickly and having it be able to stay in my room is good. Other water/heating elements took too long to ‘re-up’ the heat factor. The slow cooker keeps the water warm as long as I need it to – hours if I want. This lets me pulse and know that coming back to it, or another area, is already ready for me. I have a stretchy ace bandage I use to hold the pack in place. The ones with the Velcro are good (check ebay) but I’ve found that when it holds more weight to your body, the Velcro can come lose and you unravel. I use a pin (should be a diaper pin) as a backup system. Ya got your cold packs from the freezer, sitting next to the slow cooker. I do laundry, write posts, clean the room, do dishes – whatever I need to do. The idea of therapies you can do concurrently while getting something done in your house is truly a beautiful thing to behold. Then, ya just perform whatever rep and time length you want with the packs. If you have a lot of housework, you could do a couple hours on many parts of your body.

MAINTAINING TEMPERATURE

Btw- for the hot packs when they’re first coming out of the water – they are darned hot. Let it sit for a few minutes – a few minutes before you’re ready for it and still doing a cold pack. I’d wear a shirt and when they get too cool, you can still use the same bandage system to put the hot/cold pack under your shirt, right on your skin. It’s doubly intelligent to have twice as many cold packs in the freezer as you have heating packs. The cold ones get warmer with nothing to re-ice ‘em. And if you have something that re-ices stuff in your life – I’d reconsider my environmental, healthful angle there. That just sounds right creepy to me. Anyhow – The hot/cold packs I’ve found that are nuclear hot if you need ‘em, come in a set. A smaller one and a bigger one. Great, right? They’re made by Duro-Med and I got ‘em at Walgreens. They’re gel packs and can be hot or cold. The cold packs I have conform to your bod, too. They’re by Polar Products and are called ‘soft ice’. Good stuff.

GOING TO THE MASTER’S LEVEL

Now – if ya wanna get all crazy – you can take this circus one step further by wearing this awesome design (eh-hem) of a stretch ace-bandage, corset, hot/cold pack holder. I took a comfy jersey knit shirt and cut it into a tube. I hemmed it and sewed two 3” wide stretchy ace bandages to it. The jersey knit material allows for the heating pad to completely conform to your torso, along with the ace bandages. There’s no stiffness, so you can really create a mold to your body. I’ve learned that the ultimate castor oil pack needs to be modular. That’s what’s wrong with all the others. So, if you’re pack is open on both sides, it gives you options on how you need your cord to hang based on what you’re doing. Sometimes – I’m sitting up and it’d be better for the cord to go to the right of the bed and sometimes – I’m a lefty. With this here turbo model, you too can wear an alternate hot/cold pack on the other side of your body and astound your friends with your multi-tasking genius. :D

TANDEM HOT/COLD AND CASTOR OIL THERAPY ENGINEERING

Let’s say it’s Kidney cleanse week and you’re castor oil packing your kidneys. I’ve been obviously working on adrenal repair and so this has been most helpful. I castor oil pack my kidney/adrenal system and oooh – one more level of multi-tasking and I’m castor oiling the vertebrae that click in my spine. Who’s a smarty, eh? With that extra stretchy room on the front, I can hot/cold my spleen – which I’ve learned is very helpful when you’re not feeling well. If your spleen is processing a lot of dead white blood cells from killin blood & lymph stuff, it’s a good idea to give your spleen some love. Like if you’re taking echinacea and you’re just feelin’ like you’re killin’ SO much – castor oil pack and/or hot/cold pack your spleen. Also, the mesentery spot for lymph is good – all those healing organs within reach of that bandage can be getting some extra healing love that you might not otherwise have time to give them. Make folding laundry a concurrent act in self love. In fact, I like to work on playlists for my enemas, for relaxing, for getting’ goin (walking and aerobic), etc, while I do hot/cold therapy. I can put my feet on a hot/cold pack while I’m hot/coldin’ my core or anything else and contribute to my cleanse in yet one more easy way.

 

Shown in shirt, below, with extra elastic ace bandage outside shirt with cord lasso shown for mobility. Using another ace bandage on the outside of your shirt will allow for hotter or colder packs until they've cooled down enough to go under the shirt against bare skin.

 

PLASTIC: Saran Wrap is a total waste of time and resources. You have to replace the saran wrap often and it’s so hard to smooth the wrinkles back out. Ziplock FREEZER bags work best. Cut it in two, round the edges with scissors so there are no sharp edges. Now you have a relatively stable, stiffer material to place between your soaked flannel and your heating pad.

MOVING AROUND

Get yourself an extension cord and when you need to move out of the room, roll the cord up like Wonder Woman’s lasso and have a long twisty tie to tie it together – then you can loop your twisty tie around one of the ace bandages and voila! You’re off and running till you plug your extension cord in, in the kitchen, and can make more juice! Genius! One step further recycling? Anyone that eats raw produce has no excuse, EVER, to purchase twisty ties for any home use. I can see needing them to be uniform in something saleable but – for home use? Mine are all the bigger awesome ones that come around produce.

CASTOR OIL PANTS

Take a pair of pajama pants you like with pockets (for a million reasons) and cut a hole in them just inside from the bottom of the pocket, like 3” in from the edge and about 2” wide. This is for your heating pad cord to thread through. This way you can stop having your pajama pants pulled down further or your cord wrenched while you’re packin’. Now, if your pants are stretchy, make that hole 1” wide so when you stretch it just a teeny bit to get your pad controller through, you don't have an even bigger than you need it to be. Cotton and more sturdy fabrics, cut as wide as your controller is. This makes such a huge difference. And cut it symmetrically on both sides so that no matter what side your cord goes, you’re prepared with your handy dandy packin’ pants.

OUTDOOR HOT/COLD THERAPY

Another good idea is if you’re doing hot/cold bucket therapy for arms or legs: Get 2 cheap tubs or buckets, and do your hot/cold therapy outside. There’s really no reason, now that it’s nice outside, to do your hot/cold inside. Take that time to sit on the back porch, get wind and breathing therapy, read a book or have tea and talk to a friend.

 

Now you're a ten times smarter castor oil packer! Enjoy!