Why Arnica + Bath = Bad

So I spent a while working up and testing my Long Day Working Bath Salts. See, I’ve long been in the habit of helping people move, and since I have a bad back (well, I never said I was smart) I tend to wind up fairly broken by the end of the day.

I also tested it on friends, many of whom also help people move, or do martial arts, or break themselves in a wide and fascinating variety of ways, but I always test my concoctions on myself, first.

And boy, am I glad I did.

Arnica oil is a wonderful and commonly-used remedy for bruises and bumps where the skin has not been broken. It’s brilliant stuff, very effective, easy to find and very safe as long as you follow the instructions printed on the package in big letters NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY.

Okay, I thought, I always whack myself into something while I’m helping people move and certainly my friends into the martial arts wind up bruised on a pretty regular basis. So why not arnica in the bath salts? It’s not like people are drinking them.

As always, I test on myself first. So I did up a batch of the arnica-less salts, added a few drops of arnica oil to one bath’s worth, and cast it forth into the delicious hot water.

It was lovely and wonderful and soothing. But wait, I was starting to feel a little anxious…my heart rate rose…what, I wondered, as I lay in the bath, was I worried about? What weighed so heavily on my mind that even a bath could not soothe it…in fact seemed to be making it worse?

At which point I had a revelation…nay, a series of them.

I am a girl.

Girls have girl bits.

Girl bits are made of mucous membranes.

Which absorb things.

And they were exposed to, and thus absorbing, the arnica which is NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY so I drained the tub, rinsed myself off but good, and fled to the kitchen whereupon I poured water into myself while I prepared a cleansing tea (about which more later). Soon enough I was feeling sufficiently better to go to the computer and check out exactly why arnica is NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY:

The internal use of Arnica is not suggested. It can cause raised blood pressure, weakness, increased heart rate and nervous disturbances.

…yup. That’s what it did.

I still have the bottle. I’ll use it to make a bruise cream, which will be wonderful and effective and will help ease the bruises involved with helping people move and martial arts and such, and every jar I sell will say NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY.