How To Make A Pain Healing Mint Salve

Finding ways to conveniently apply the wonderful pain-relieving qualities of mint is sometimes a challenge. You may have gorgeous, fragrant peppermint plants growing in the garden, or soothing peppermint tea. Perhaps you have a small bottle of aromatic essential oils of spearmint, and you are looking for a handy way to use it topically.

Here you have a step-by-step recipe for making an easy-to-use pain healing mint salve that can absorb deeply into sore muscles and joints.

Mint: Nature’s Pain Reliever

The pain-relieving power in mint lies with its menthol compounds. Many mint plants contain some amount of menthol, but peppermint has the highest concentrations.

Spearmint also has menthol, and like peppermint, has carvacrol, and limonene. These pain-killing plants have been used traditionally for pain relief for centuries.

More recently, their analgesic qualities show safe and effective benefits for osteoarthritis and other chronic musculoskeletal pain sufferers.

Peppermint Infused Oil

In the recipe to follow, I simply use essential oils of peppermint and spearmint, which are generally available from most health food stores and online suppliers.

You may want to infuse the oil with pure mint for the recipe to follow. Surprisingly, even though it is February, I was still able to obtain fresh mint from our grocery store. If it were early to late spring, harvesting mint from the garden, or finding local, fresh mint would be a great addition to creating your own mint-infused oil as well.

Another way to infuse oil would be to use dried mint leaves from the garden, or even from opening a couple of pure peppermint tea bags. It is certainly an option and can help create an even more potent pain-relieving salve. You can find more details in the video below:

A Note On Ingredients 

The salve itself is made with local beeswax, pure coconut oil, olive oil, and essential oils. Using emollients that absorb deeply into the skin such as coconut and olive oils helps to bring the beneficial compounds of menthol, limonene, and carvacrol to the aching muscles and joints.

The local beeswax works as a stabilizer and thickener so that the medicinal qualities get where you want them. It creates a luxurious consistency to the salve, which helps it to stay in place. It also helps to dilute the powerful pain-fighting properties of the active ingredients so that they work over a longer period.

The recipe uses peppermint essential oil and spearmint essential oil. Essential oils of peppermint and spearmint are known for their anesthetic and anti-inflammatory qualities.

We will be making the salve directly in the final containers. This saves a lot of waste from making the concoction in a double broiler and pouring the liquid into the containers. It also saves a lot of clean-up time.

Recipe For Pain Healing Mint Salve

• Makes 3 ounces.
• 3 one-ounce containers.
• 3 tablespoons grated beeswax.
• 3 tablespoons cold, flaked coconut oil.
• 9 tablespoons olive oil
• 30 drops peppermint essential oil
• 15 drops spearmint essential oil

Step 1:

Grate or shave beeswax onto a tray or wax paper. Distribute evenly into the three containers.

Step 2:

Have the coconut in the fridge where it will become hard. Scrap it out in flakes. Place about 1 tablespoon of flakes in each container. They will begin to melt at room temperature.

Step 3:

Fill the containers with olive oil. Save a bit of room for the essential oils. You can always top up with olive oil at the end.

* If you are using your own purchased or homemade mint-infused oil, it would be fantastic to use it here, instead of the olive oil.

Step 4:

Place 10 peppermint essential oil drops in each container.

Step 5:

Place 5 spearmint essential oil drops in each container.

* If you are using purchased or homemade mint-infused oil, you may choose to use less essential oils or choose to not use any at all.

Step 6:

Lightly stir the ingredients together. You’ll notice I’ve topped up the containers with olive oil and that I’m just using a mint stem as a stir stick.

Step 7:

Place in a very warm spot. I put mine on an old tin tray to sit directly on the woodstove to allow the ingredients to melt together. If the containers are metal or glass, this would work. They could also be placed in an oven that has residual heat from what it was cooking.

Step 8:

Once all the ingredients are liquified, give the liquid another quick stir and move to a cold location. I put mine in the cold room/root cellar for about an hour.

Step 9:

Now that all the ingredients are combined and solid at room temperature, I put lids on the three containers to use on the go or at home.

Many Ways to Use Pain Healing Mint Salve

There are many soothing applications for your homemade pain healing mint salve. Here are a few ways.

A lovely way to soothe sore joints, freely rub salve on knees, elbows, hips, wrists, or any joints that ache. Generally, two to three times a day will provide deep pain relief.

Use the salve to massage into sore muscles in arms, legs, back, neck, shoulders, or of course, the sore muscles of a loved one.

At bedtime, rub some salve on sore feet and ankles to relieve pain and inflammation. Mint salve will also help increase blood flow to the extremities. This is excellent at the end of the day after you are not walking around. The increased moisture on your feet may be slippery so please be careful if you are running around barefoot with salve on your feet.

After working with your hands, give yourself a lovely hand massage with this soothing, analgesic salve.

The salve is also excellent for reducing headaches. Place a small amount at the base of your skull and around your ears and temples to feel your headache disappear. Again, it may add increased moisture and oil to your hair which you may not want if you are prone to oily hair.

Warnings And Cautions 

People who are sensitive to bees, bee stings, or pollen may want to be cautious when using beeswax. Peppermint essential oil and spearmint essential oil has been scientifically proven to be a safe and effective treatment for pain reduction.

Making pain healing mint salve provides a convenient way to transport the painkilling properties in mint to the sore and aching areas of the body that need relief. We hope this recipe helps any pain you may be suffering from.

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