Arnica - A Home First Aid Essential For Bruising and Inflammation

I have never really thought of Arnica as a herb, but only as a homeopathic treatment. It is usually found in homeopathic first aid kits, and I always used to keep it around the home when still living in England. A herb it is, though. Arnica is a plant found in Northern Europe with pretty daisy like flowers.

Mostly, homeopathic treatments are for certain individuals for certain conditions and symptoms. Homeopathy is about the whole person, a holistic form of medicine which I discovered had some powerful uses back in the mid 1980's. For a genuine homeopath to treat a patient, they need a long consultation to get the full picture of the patients personality as well as medical history, and current problems. The homeopath may treat different people with identical symptoms with a different remedy.

Arnica, though, is a remedy that does seem to work with a wide range of people, hence its effectiveness as a first aid treatment, usually for inflammation and bruising. I wish I had know it when I was being crippled by Ankylosing Spondilytis in the 1970's.

When it came to the 1990's, I had to have two more hip replacements, making it hip joints number 5 and 6. By then, I had been off NSAIDS , the anti-inflammatory group of drugs, for more than 10 years. I had such confidence in Arnica by the time of the two operations, that on both occasions I took my arnica remedy bottle into hospital, knowing that I would be offered an NSAID after being cut open, sawed with a hacksaw, hammered with a hammer, and sown up again. On the second occasion, the surgeon broke my thigh in the process, just to add a bit of variety.

After the first operation the nurse came in with my medication. I looked suspicously at one tablet: "Anti-inflammatory?" I asked. It was.

I declined and showed her my arnica bottle. Later the surgeon came in, and when I mentioned the arnica, he said "that's good." He was understanding and not at all put out. He had come to learn the effectiveness of arnica for inflammation and bruising from other patients.

So, arnica was all I took to relieve pain, bruising and inflammation. The first time was an experiment; the second time the surgeon never even prescribed the anti-inflammatory.

When I moved to the Philippines there was no hope of finding homeopathic treatments, and when our daughter was born and getting mobile I wanted to keep arnica in the house for all those inevitable falls. I ordered some from the US, and it has been used often for my clumsy daughter for the last two years.

Yesterday, I had an emergency phone call from my wife, I thought at the local market. She couldn't talk, but handed the phone to her friend. "Please, come quick to the medical center", she told me. "Mhe Ann can't walk, and she blacked out."

Her dizzy black out had probably been caused by a spasm in the back as she heard a click in the base of her spine. The doctor prescribed several medications, one of which was an NSAID. After discussing it later, she preferred to try arnica after my very bad experiences with NSAIDS.

She rubbed the arnica ointment on the source of the back pain, and eventually fell asleep. When she woke in the night, just a few hours later, she felt no pain. Another victory for arnica? Probably, it has never really let me down when needed.