Castor Oil Pack for Joint Pain
How to make one, what it does, what to expect
Season Year-round
Ingredients
- Castor oil — cold-pressed, in glass
- A piece of flannel, or an unbleached paper towel
- Plastic wrap
- A hot water bottle or heating pad
- An old towel you do not mind ruining
Method
Put about a tablespoon of castor oil on the flannel and let it soak in, or oil the skin directly and lay the flannel over it. Cover with plastic wrap to keep the oil off your heating pad. Put the heat on top, and leave it for twenty minutes to an hour. Castor oil stains permanently, so put the old towel underneath and do not do this in your good dressing gown.
A castor oil pack is a cloth soaked in castor oil, held against the skin under gentle heat. That is all it is, and people have been making them for a very long time.
For an aching joint, three or four times a week is a reasonable rhythm, and you would expect to know within a fortnight whether it is helping you. Store the flannel in a glass jar in the fridge between uses and add fresh oil each time; it will last for months. What most people report is a loosening, and easier movement the next morning, rather than anything dramatic during the pack itself.
Where does this come from? Not from Chinese medicine. Castor oil is one of the oldest recorded remedies there is — it appears in the Ebers papyrus around 1550 BC — but the pack in the form we use it was popularized in twentieth-century America, largely through Edgar Cayce, who recommended it in hundreds of readings and framed it as improving circulation and elimination.
Do not use a pack over broken or irritated skin, and do not use one during pregnancy. If you have not used castor oil before, put a little on your inner forearm the day before and check you do not react to it.
