Biofreeze Pain Relieving Roll-On affords a unique feature that can enhance the convenience of this application process. The roller application allows the Health Care Professional or patient to apply the product without getting product on their hands. This can be convenient for the older patient in applying product to hard to reach places or for someone in the workplace who must apply product during the workday.
Traditional thinking is that the pain-relieving mechanism of action of menthol – the active ingredient in Biofreeze Pain Reliever – results from a counter-irritant effect. Simply put, a counter-irritant has an effect of overriding noxious pain signals traveling to the brain through a process modulated between pain-transmitting and non-pain transmitting neurons. This process, known as “gate control” or “gating,” was first described by Melzak and Wall. More recently, laboratory researchers have discovered that menthol stimulates the TRPM8 cold receptors. Even though it has long been accepted that cooling and cold can induce analgesia it has been a poorly understood mechanism. As scientists have continued to isolate these specific heat-sensitive transient receptor potential (TRP) channels within our sensory neurons we are now able to have a much better understanding of the body’s cutaneous temperature detection. With the isolation and further study of these specific TRPM8 receptors there is stronger evidence supporting the benefits achieved with the cooling effect of menthol in functioning as a topical analgesic while activating these receptors and the resulting consequent pain relief.