We love our ferriswheelshop website, but have branched out to sell our Microwave Heating Pads on www.hotcoldcomfort as well.  We had a wonderful facebook contest to name it, and thought hotcoldcomfort said it all.

Hot Packs and Cold Packs are so much fun to design and we’re excited to offer them all over the web.  With our new site, we have them categorized a bit differently.  We’ve made categories to fit the particlar area of the body or ailment.

You can still find all our exciting designs including our Neck Shoulder Back Heating Pad, Hot or Cold Thumb Wrap, Bulk or Wholesale Microwave Heat Packs and many more.  We’ve also added a neat ‘how to’ page.

Thanks so much to all our customers and facebook fans for keeping us growing and loving what we do!

Last week I started to have a terrible toothache that ended with a root canal. Not fun, but worth it to get rid of the pain! During a sleepless, painful night, I broke out our Hot or Cold Headband and warmed it in the microwave – thinking a little heat usually helps any aching pain, so this should bring some relief.  Uh – no!  The heat made it worse so I went to the freezer to get one of our already chilled cold packs (I didn’t have a headband chilled).  That did the trick to bring some relief, although nothing but antibiotics and a root canal really fixed the problem.

I decided to do some research about toothaches and tooth pain.  Looks like as with most other pain, it depends on the causes and individual tooth.  Some toothaches are definitely helped with heat.  I know that toothache/TMJ pain usually responds very well to heat as we’ve had many many customers tell us our microwaved headband brought instant jaw pain relief. Sometimes, cold will really help a toothache, although other times cold can make it worse.  So, the bottom line is – you just need to try heat and cold packs to see which one really helps.  Seems like since my morning coffee was sending my toothache into orbit, I would have realized heat was not a good idea for me!

A good friend told me she had thumb and hand pain from texting so much, and my ears immediately perked up.  “You have a pain, you say?”  A challenge.  I’ve never met an ache or pain I didn’t want to help   Heat packs and cold packs can almost always help with pain, so I knew I needed to design a product that would target this specific area.

I began a quest to find out A) How prevalent is this hurting thumb symptom?, and B) Can I design a product to help?  Turns out A) very prevalent, and B) of course!

Wikipedia actually has the term ‘Blackberry Thumb’ listed as a word (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_thumb).  Many people experience throbbing and aching in the thumb, through the hand, and down to the wrist.  Video gamers, crafters, texters and others who use their thumbs repetitively can also be susceptible to thumb pain.

Other terms for cramping, hurting thumbs are thumb arthritis and texting tendonitis.  Basically, repetitive stress injury (RSI) can cause pain anywhere in the body.  The thumb, hands and wrist are no exception.

The good news is gentle stretching and heat can be remarkable help when dealing with thumb, hand and wrist pain.  I designed our Therapy Thumb Wrap to wrap the thumb, lower hand, and wrist up in warm moist heat which is one of the best treatments for aching muscles.  Since coming on the market several months ago, this heat pack (or cold pack) for the thumb has turned into one of our best sellers.  We’re so pleased to add yet another targeted product to ease your specific ache.

NSB

Whew, what a busy holiday season it was here at TheFerrisWheels!  Apparently, we’re not the only ones who think Microwave Heat Pads make the perfect holiday gift.  Thank you to all our wonderful customers from our Website as well as Artfire and Etsy.

As usual, our Neck Shoulder Back Heating Pad was our best seller .

Microwave Heat Cold Pack Special

Customers also gave many Christmas Specials

XL Lap Blanket

and XL Lap Blankets .

Microwave Heat Pads are a must for those chilly winter nights!

On Christmas Eve, TheFerrisWheels family drove from FL to NC to visit Chet’s family.  We love going every year and enjoy the cold Christmas weather. After a week, we were all ready to head back home and get back to work.

Here’s to a wonderful 2012 for all of you.  We plan on staying busy with new microwave heat pack designs and fabrics.  Stay tuned!

Our kids often experienced growing pains when they were younger, so I decided to do a little research on exactly what growing pains are and how to help them.  I suspected heat was a great treatment, and I was right!

First, growing pains are usually experienced by children between the ages of three to five and then eight to twelve.  I can certainly attest to this with my own children.  However, many teenagers can also experience growing pains.

Typically, growing pains hurt in the muscles, not the joints or bones.  Surprisingly enough, growing pains are not really from actual growing.  It’s often a catch-all term used to describe any nonserious ache or pain that children may have.  Growing pains are usually associated with evenings and/or waking in the night with pains.

The best treatments for growing pains are heat applied to the area in the form of heating pads or heat packs (we love the microwavable ones!).  Stretching and parent massage can also help the discomfort of growing pains.

With children, often just some kind of treatment will make them feel better.  This is why they love band aids even for bruises.  It gives them something tangible that they can see will make them feel better.  We love gently warmed microwave heat packs for this very reason (and many more).  Children can put the warm heating pad on their ache or pain and not only does the heat actually help, they have a tangible, inexpensive and easy treatment to make them all better!

Hot and Cold Packs are one of the best natural solutions for chronic pain and injury.  We strive to provide the most unique, well made hot and cold therapy packs on the market.

How did we get started with this venture?  My mom suffered with fibromyalgia for years (many of those years undiagnosed).  She used a bed buddy daily to ease her neck and shoulder pain.  However, it did not provide all the heat therapy coverage she really needed.  We began searching for a microwavable heat pad that actually covered her neck, shoulders and her upper back.  After an extensive and unfruitful search both on-line and off, we determined the best course of action was to design and make our own.

After, ahem, quite a bit of trial and error, we came up with a hot cold therapy pack that is designed reach up high on the neck and stretch across the shoulders while sitting comfortably across the back.  My mom, her friends and eventually thousands of customers have used our ‘NSB’ therapy pack to loosen neck and shoulder tightness and ease their pain.

Since that first product, I’ve discovered I love designing and creating therapy packs for all types of uses.  My husband joined my little venture in August of 2010 to make this a true family run business (He’s great at all the stuff I’m not so great at like accounting, inventory control, etc…)

Here’s a small taste of the satisfaction I get from designing products that help ease stress and pain.  Just got this email this morning…

“I just wanted y’all to know how wonderful your products are, especially the small lumbar pack. It works great for low back pain and really holds the heat. Currently I am using it just to lay over an abdominal incision-it isn’t too heavy, keeps the cat from stepping on me, and also works great to protect/pad from the seatbelt in the car. My husband and I share the neck and shoulder wrap, and it too is a lifesaver. I am so glad I found your products and cannot reccomend them highly enough.”

Pain is caused for many reasons, including fatigue, stress, overuse, injury, surgery, etc… Muscles read all these as injury and contract for protection. Muscle contraction reduces blood flow and oxygen and causes pain. Brain reads pain as new injury and tightens muscles more – this is the pain spasm cycle. Heat therapy helps to relax your muscles, and increase blood flow.