Giant Pandas have arrived

Toronto zoo now have 2 new pandas.

THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER…THE GIANT PANDAS ARE HERE, THEIR EXHIBIT OPENS MAY 18, 2013!

These are cute and cuddly

The Toronto Zoo is very pleased to report that giant pandas Er Shun and Da Mao are now resting comfortably after having been successfully moved into their new habitat.

The off load into their new exhibit went smoothly and we want to thank FedEx Express for the exceptional attention to detail during all points of the transport, both in the air and on the ground.

FedEx’s expertise in moving precious cargo was clearly demonstrated to everyone at the Toronto Zoo.

Both giant pandas traveled well, with Er Shun being a little nervous, but both are now resting and curious about their new surroundings.

They ate almost 200 kgs of apples and 200 kgs of bamboo during their flight.

On Friday, March 22, 2013, FedEx delivered a shipment of bamboo from the Memphis Zoo and almost immediately after being unloaded, both pandas were heartily enjoying bamboo. The Toronto Zoo will continue to receive regular shipments of bamboo from Memphis which will be transported by FedEx as part of their ongoing commitment to the giant pandas.

Er Shun and Da Mao have not met each other yet as they are being kept in separate areas during the minimum 30 day quarantine period.

They will remain separated until the Chinese Giant Panda Experts and the Toronto Zoo Keepers determine the most appropriate time for them to meet face-to-face.

Although they have not been formally introduced to each other in the same room, they can see and smell each other from across the hallway of their respective holding areas.

You won’t have to wait 30 days for our pandas they are available immediately, here is a link to our ordering page

Heating pads for back pain

The benefits of using heat for pain relief

Using Heat for Pain Problems

When and how to apply heat for therapy … and when not to!

Published 2007, updated 2010
by Paul Ingraham, Vancouver, Canada

Not sure when to use ice or heat? Start with this super-short overview:
The Great Ice vs. Heat Confusion Debacle.
Please note that you should rarely (almost never) ice low back pain.

Therapeutic heating — “thermotherapy” for therapy geeks — is more useful than most people realize, because painful muscle problems are more common than most people realize. Pain caused by muscle spasm and muscular trigger points (muscle knots) is common and often severe, yet routinely mistaken for other kinds of problems. Consequently, one of the cheapest and best treatments — heat! — is routinely neglected.

Mustard plasters were widely used and probably brought about relaxation of muscle spasm through the heat generated by the plaster. Sometimes folk medicine is more sensible than ‘modern’ medicine. In any case, I suspect that the low-key, nonthreatening approach to back problems characterized by an earlier time helped to prevent the kind of long-term, disastrous courses that exist today.

John Sarno, Mind Over Back Pain: A radically new approach to the diagnosis and treatment of back pain

Everyone should understand heating the same way everyone knows how to put on a band aid. It is a cheap, drugless way of helping an amazing array of pain problems related to muscle dysfunction, especially neck and back pain. Heat will not single-handedly “cure” such problems, but it is directly therapeutic, as opposed to “just” relieving symptoms.

What heat is for

Heat is primarily for muscle pain, and for stress relief. Warm Buddy heat packs and heat wraps offer a warm moist penetrating heat, that penetrate the muscle tissue and relieve aches and pains fast  and without the need of any over the counter pain medication.

The trick is knowing what muscle pain is. Muscle causes much more pain than most people are aware of. Some kinds of muscle pain are obvious enough — like the pain you get after the first ski trip of the season, or charlie horses in the night — but these are relatively isolated and obvious examples. Also, heat isn’t especially useful for them. Charlie horses are pretty fast, and for most people a rare problem, thankfully. And that post-exercise muscle soreness is virtually immune to any kind of therapy.

But muscle knots …

When you say that you have “knots in your muscles,” you are actually talking about trigger points. A trigger point is a small patch of contracted, stagnant, swampy muscle tissue. Instead of the whole muscle being in spasm, just a little piece of it is in spasm.

If you’d like to detour and learn much more about trigger points, see
Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain Syndrome: A guide to the science of muscle pain, with reviews of every possible self-treatment and therapy option, even for the most difficult cases.

Trigger points are likely to be the most common cause of undiagnosed and unexplained aches and pains, especially stubborn or recurrent headaches, neck cricks and backaches. It is a much more common cause of pain than the more widely reported repetitive strain injuries (RSIs), nerve pain, or herniated disks. Trigger points also complicate essentially all other injuries: they usually appear in response to other kinds of pain and dysfunction, and then often begin to overshadow the original problem.

And heat is a good therapy for trigger points.

What heat is not for

Never apply heat to a fresh injury! Really. Just don’t do it! That’s what icing is for. Ice is for injuries.

And what’s a “fresh” injury? Any time tissue has been physically damaged, it will be inflamed for a few days, give or take, depending on the seriousness of the injury. If superficial tissue is sensitive to touch, if the skin is hot and red, if there is swelling, these are all signs that your injury is still fresh, and should not be heated.

Here’s an example of what can happen when you heat an inflamed injury: When I was still in school, and my father had not yet learned to call me before asking a doctor about his aches and pains, he went to a drop-in clinic following a traumatic knee injury. The physician on duty prescribed heat! This is shockingly wrong, but the results spoke loud and clear: his knee swelled dramatically, outrageously, causing severe pain and immobility.

Bear in mind that heating is for muscle knots or trigger points and muscle spasm, but not for physically injured muscle — muscle strains, pulled muscles, torn muscles. Damaged muscle is usually inflamed, not in spasm, and trigger points are a minor factor in the aftermath of the injury. It’s usually obvious that you’ve torn muscle because there is always a very clear, nasty “oh shit” moment of trauma, where you know — instantly — that something has gone quite wrong.

However, you may be understandably confused about the difference between spasms, knots, tears, etc., especially if you have back pain, where it can and does sometimes get all mixed together. People routinely believe that their backs and necks are injured when in fact they are just suffering from trigger points. I have other articles devoted to clearing up this confusion.

If you think you have a muscle strain, but you’re not sure, a great article for helping you sort it out is Save Yourself from Muscle Strain!

If back pain is your issue and your not sure what’s causing it, get thee to Save Yourself from Low Back Pain!

And the article (Almost) Never Use Ice on Low Back Pain! is specifically devoted to helping people understand why heating back pain is almost always better than icing it.

How heat works

It’s not scientifically clear exactly why heat is such a treat. However, a good guess is that there are several minor positive effects that add up to … therapy. Most of these effects are also beneficial in other ways. Not incredibly beneficial, and not even notably different from icing: for instance, a 2010 study showed quite clearly that both ice packs and hot packs were beneficial for neck and back pain, and about equally so.1 But a small therapeutic effect is still valuable even if it’s small, and there are probably situations where it works even better — after all, these were people with acute pain bad enough that they went to the hospital. They may have been a bit beyond the help of a hot pack!

Trigger points are known to be aggravated by stress (“fight or flight” hormones and neurology). As long as we aren’t overheated to begin with, being warm is a pleasant and comforting sensation. Our comfort zone is a warm place. Heat almost always relaxes you overall.

Warm Buddy heat pads the best for all back pain and muscle pain relief. Offer warm moist penetrating heat.

Overall relaxation usually reduces resting muscle tone. You can have “tight” muscles without actually being in spasm. There are many degrees of increasing muscle tone between relaxed and “spasm.” A true muscle spasm is very strong and painful, like a charlie horse. But many people live in a state of near spasm — their muscles always clenched and exhausted. This state is both uncomfortable in itself, causing the same kind of muscle discomfort that you have when you are exhausted from exercise … but without the endorphins. And of course it also aggravates trigger points. So any reduction in muscle tone is quite helpful. And the reduction in stress hormones makes it a more therapeutic (lasting) effect, as opposed to just momentary symptom relief.

Our comfort zone is a warm place. Heat almost always relaxes you overall.

Although scientists don’t really understand the physiology of why trigger points come and go, they have certainly identified why they hurt — the stagnant, swampy tissue fluids inside a trigger point are a disgusting bath for nerve endings. Heat facilitates circulation somewhat, helping to wash away metabolic waste products, and bring fresh oxygen and nutrients to the area. No one knows how strong this effect is.

As with everything about trigger points, there are many (many) variables, and consequently it is very hard to study, and everyone gets different results. But heat seems to have enough relevant benefits that many people get at least temporary, partial relief from trigger point pain by heating. And some people find it downright curative.
 

Cancer – skin stimulation:

Skin stimulation

In this series of techniques, pressure, warmth, or cold is used on the skin, while the feeling of pain is lessened or blocked. Massage, pressure, vibration, heat, cold, and menthol preparations can also be used to stimulate the skin. These techniques also change the flow of blood to the area that is stimulated. Sometimes skin stimulation will get rid of pain or lessen pain during the stimulation and for hours after it is finished.

Skin stimulation is done either on or near the area of pain. You can also use skin stimulation on the side of the body opposite the pain. For example, you might stimulate the left knee to decrease the pain in the right knee. Stimulating the skin in areas away from the pain can be used to increase relaxation and may relieve pain.

We have many customers who have gone through chemotherapy and have found our heat packs to be of great relief for their after pain, all our heat packs can be used hot or cold depending on the type of therapy required.

Warm Buddy make the best heat packs for relieving pain and stress

Warm Buddy Company creates products that promote relaxation and provide natural relief from aches, pains and stress. We have been following this philosophy since 1995, while creating our world famous aromatherapy heat wraps, heat packs, eye pillows and the original warm up plush animals.

Warm Buddy rejuvenating heat therapy products have become recognized for their superior quality and long heat holding ability. Warm Buddy heat wraps and heat packs are safe, easy to use and highly effective. Simply heat in the microwave or cool in the freezer as desired.

All Warm Buddy heat therapy products are Approved medical devices by Health Canada for the relief of aches pains and stress.

All Warm Buddy heat therapy products are proudly made in Canada.

Heat and Pain Relief

We instinctively know that heat is good for pain relief, but do we know why?

Scientists have found a molecular basis for the long-standing theory that heat, such as that from a hot-water bottle applied to the skin, provides relief from internal pains, such as stomach aches, for up to an hour.

Dr Brian King, leader of the team that carried out the research at the UCL Department of Physiology, said: “The heat doesn’t just provide comfort and have a placebo effect – it actually deactivates the pain at a molecular level in much the same way as pharmaceutical painkillers work. We have discovered how this molecular process works.”

The team found that when heat is applied to the skin near to where internal pain is felt, it switches on heat receptors located at the site of injury. These heat receptors in turn block the effect of chemical messengers that cause pain to be detected by the body.

How does heat help?

• By increasing tissue elasticity, heat reduces your resting muscle tension and helps to relax those nasty painful knots.

• Your pain is quickly eased via the sedation and soothing of any pain-irritated nerve endings.

• The deep heating effect increases your blood flow to the painful area, bringing more nutrients to the injured area while flushing out the injured debris. This helps to quicken your healing rate.

• The deep heat also promotes a speedier healing rate by stimulating your natural metabolic rate. In other words, there is more energy available to fix the injury quicker.

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Check out this video on heating pads for back pain

Cancer skin stimulation

The use of heat to stimulate the skin after cancer treatment or Chemotherapy is extremely therapeutic.

Skin stimulation

In this series of techniques, pressure, warmth, or cold is used on the skin, while the feeling of pain is lessened or blocked. Massage, pressure, vibration, heat, cold, and menthol preparations can also be used to stimulate the skin. These techniques also change the flow of blood to the area that is stimulated. Sometimes skin stimulation will get rid of pain or lessen pain during the stimulation and for hours after it is finished.

Skin stimulation is done either on or near the area of pain. You can also use skin stimulation on the side of the body opposite the pain. For example, you might stimulate the left knee to decrease the pain in the right knee. Stimulating the skin in areas away from the pain can be used to increase relaxation and may relieve pain.

What you should know about skin stimulation

If you are having radiation therapy, check with your doctor or nurse before using skin stimulation. You should not put ointments, salves, menthol, or liniments on the treatment area, and you should not use heat or extreme cold on treated areas. If you are getting chemotherapy, check with your doctor before using hot or cold packs.

Cold or heat: As with any of the techniques described, you should use what works best for you. Heat often relieves sore muscles. Cold lessens the feeling of pain by numbing the painful area. You can also switch back and forth between heat and cold for added relief in some cases.

For cold, try our body wrap. You can get them here. They can be used again and stored in the freezer.

Precautions: If you start to shiver when using cold, stop right away. Do not use cold so intense or for so long that the cold itself causes more pain.

Avoid cold over any area where you are getting radiation treatments and for 6 months after it has ended.

If you are getting chemotherapy, check with your doctor before using a cold pack.

Do not use cold over any area where your circulation or sensation is poor.

Do not apply cold for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

To use heat for pain relief, a heating pad with a moisture option is handy. You can also try gel packs heated in hot water; hot water bottles; a hot, moist towel; a regular heating pad; a hot bath or shower; or a hot tub to apply heat. You might want to try one of the heat patches you can buy at the drugstore. For aching joints, such as elbows and knees, wrap the joint in a lightweight plastic wrap (tape the plastic to itself). This retains body heat and moisture.

Precautions: Do not use a heating pad on bare skin. Do not fall asleep with the heating pad turned on. Be very careful if you are taking medicines that make you sleepy or if you do not have much feeling in the area.

Do not use heat over a new injury because heat can increase bleeding — wait at least 24 hours.

Avoid heat over any area where you are getting radiation treatments and for 6 months after treatment has ended.

Do not use heat over any area where your circulation or sensation is poor.

Do not apply heat for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

These heat packs will last you for many comforting years.

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Check out our short video on cancer skin stimulation

Back pain management

Muscle pain relief heating pad for aches and pains & will also help relieve back pain & stress.
Extra large size, weight and penetrating moist heat provides back pain management and comfort for those who suffer
with back muscle spasms , shoulder pain and sore muscles and require back pain management.

Back pain management & muscle pain relief

Stress Relief

Relieve back pain & Sore Muscles

Many back pain problems result from strains and over-exertions, creating tension in the back muscles and soft tissues around the lower spine. As a result, this restricts proper circulation and sends pain signals to the brain.

For athletes or weekend warriors with sports injuries,pulled or aching muscles here is some information on the importance of keeping muscles warm before warm ups or stretches, the sports therapy wrap will help reduce the muscle injuries.

Recent studies have found that heat wrap therapy proved to be more effective
back pain relief than oral pain medications such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

Physiotherapy in sport

Heat packs are used in physiotherapy for sport injuries to decrease muscle spasms, which relax the muscles and allow for a deeper heat penetration into the muscle tissue.  Heat therapy also allows for increased blood flow to an injured area, resulting in faster healing times and welcome muscle pain relief.

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Check out our Back pain management video

Well as predicted this winter is colder than normal.

The one thing people are asking is, “How can I keep warm” without breaking the bank.

For years we have advocated the use of our Warm Buddy heat packs and heat wraps, simply place in the microwave for the specified time and they will keep you warm for an hour or more.

We have been able to reduce our hydro bill by at least 30% each year, by turning the thermostat down and using the heat packs.

Here are some more warm up products you can use.

keep Warm

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It is that time of year. new year resolutions and Vancouver sun run seem to meld together.

Which has the strongest pull? We have for years resolved to making Vancouverites and Canadians fit through the use of our Sports Therapy wrap.

Whilst warm ups and stretching and training are a prerequisite for this race, so are fit toned muscles.

This is where our Sports Therapy wrap comes in.

You see before you do your stretches and warm ups, your muscles are like an elastic band, if you try to stretch and old tired elastic band it will snap, this is the same with your muscles, they need to be warm and supple before you start to stretch them.

The Sports Therapy Wrap is ideal for this purpose, place it in the microwave for 3 minutes and place it on your muscles and they will relax and be more able to support the stress and strains you will be placing on them.

Now should you pull a muscle the Sports Therapy wrap can also be frozen to be used for cold therapy and use heat for the old aches and pains following the race.

If you live in Vancouver these will be delivered next day

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Check out this Vancouver sun run 2013 video

Our Body wrap is one of our most popular lower back pain relief heating pads for back pain in early pregnancy,
the design and popularity have been unchanged (apart from the fabric covers) since it’s design in 1995.

Back pain in early pregnancy microwavable heating pad

Use Hot or Cold

Back pain relief in early pregnancy

Another useful application for our Body wrap:

Treat sore muscle lower back pain in early pregnancy:

Here is a heart felt story from Kristina

• Why use Tylenol or Motrin, Advil, Nuprin — Ibuprofen or any other over the counter pain medication.
• When all our Warm Buddy products are all drug FREE and used for natural pain relief.

Back pain in early pregnancy video

Keeping warm each winter can be costly, with the cost of heating fuel and other means of heating.

Our warm buddy heating pads and warm up animals can help reduce the cost of your heating bill.

Just turn the thermostat down and pop a heat pack in the microwave for 3 minutes and the heat will keep you warm for an hour or more.

Our warm up animals are also popular each winter.

The large animals will help keep the chill off you for an hour or so.

We have been able to reduce our heating bills through the winter by 30%.

Here is one of our most popular animals the large puppy.

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Sports injuries can occur when we least expect them, we are tired,cold or have not done warm ups.

Sports Injuries

Pain relief relief using our Sports Therapy wraps,
sports enthusiasts or people looking for hot or cold heating pads for back pain relief
therapy for their back or neck pain: This is how they get their natural,local back pain and relief heat therapy.
This is an approved Vancouver fitness medical device used by many in Vancouver and around the world for back muscle pain.

Vancouver heating pads for back pain relief.

Our Sports Therapy wrap is used by therapists to relieve back pain and shoulder muscles pain,
when you need it most.Penetrating moist heat that gives sore muscles &  sudden back pain  relief fast.

Recent studies have found that heat wrap therapy proved to be more effective pain management for sudden back pain than oral pain medications such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

Sudden lower back pain medical device for Vancouver fitness for sore muscle  & muscle spasms.

Core exercises are so important to muscle maintenance and reducing sports Injuries:

Home Spa

Transform your home into a spa.

Did you ever wonder where to get the spa products that you find at the high end spa’s.

We have supplied many high end spas with these products and you can now enjoy these in the comfort of your own home at a fraction of the cost a single spa visit would cost you, plus these products will last you for many years and many enjoyable peaceful relaxing spa evenings at home.

The spa treatment gift has been created for you to really indulge yourself and not feel at all guilty.

Our famous anti stress bath salts for you to soak away your stresses and cares, & cover your eyes with our ultra eye mask and dream of your stress free life with the spa treatment kit.
After, you can put on our ultra warming slippers and relax with our ultra warming blanket.
Perfect gift for any day you want to spoil or be spoiled with The spa treatment.
The spa treatment gift has been created for you to really indulge yourself and not feel at all guilty.

Our famous anti stress bath salts for you to soak away your stresses and cares, and cover your eyes with our ultra eye mask and dream of your stress free life with the spa treatment kit.
After, you can put on our ultra warming slippers and relax with our ultra warming blanket.
Perfect gift for any day you want to spoil or be spoiled with The spa treatment.

• Ultra shoulder wrap that will help take those stress knots out of your shoulders and neck
• Body wrap to relax the back muscles and keep you warm
• Spa wrap to use on other areas of the body to relax the muscles
• Neck roll that when heated will take away all the tension in the neck muscles and help you totally relax
• Finally our 4 ox bottle of anti stress bath salts.

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