Icy Hot vs Tiger Balm – Differences Explained

While you are training, cross-training, competing, and racing, your body can become incredibly physically exhausted and your muscles, tendons, or joints will ache. 

Over anything else, it is most important to really listen to your body and your health care professionals. If there is something that is too painful to continue training or running on you might want to rest and take a break from your training.

If the pain you are facing is a soreness, tightness, or stiffness, then a pain-relieving gel, lotion, or balm could be helpful to your recovery and your training. 

This article will help you to learn between Icy Hot and Tiger Balm, which pain-relieving cream is best for you and your training.

The biggest difference is that Icy Hot contains 30%-40% active ingredients including methyl salicylate where Tiger Balm uses 60% active ingredients making it slightly stronger. 

What is Icy Hot?

Icy Hot is a product that comes in creams, gels, and balms that can be used to treat minor aches and pains of the muscles and joints, for example arthritis, backache, sprains, and muscle soreness and tightness.

Read our full review Icy Hot here.  

How does Icy Hot work?

The active ingredients in Icy Hot formulations are menthol or a combination of menthol and methyl salicylate. These specific ingredients help to cause a cooling sensation that is followed by a warming sensation. 

This sensation distracts you from the pain by blocking pain signals sent to the brain to decrease the pain you are actually feeling.

What are the primary ingredients in Icy Hot?

Icy Hot formulations include FDA permitted active ingredients to help to relieve minor pain. Icy Hot products contain menthol, a combination of menthol and camphor, and a combination of menthol and methyl salicylate. 

Menthol and methyl salicylate are both considered active ingredients and work together to relieve pain. The camphor is used often times to in place of methyl salicylate in other icy hot products to reduce pain.

What are some possible side effects?

Pain-reliever creams and patches can burn the skin, cautions FDA. Pain-relieving products applied to the skin, such as Bengay and Icy Hot, can help relieve muscle and joint aches, but in rare cases, they can cause severe chemical burns, the Food and Drug Administration recently warned. 

If used in excess they could become dangerous, and if you notice any kind of rash, that could be a sign of an allergic reaction.

You should seek help from a medical professional as soon as possible.

What is Tiger Balm?

Tiger Balm is a product that comes in a balm-like salve that helps to relieve and alleviate pain and soreness in muscles and joints caused by perfectly healthy situations such as running or working out as well as situations such as alleviating the pain caused by arthritis or sprains.

How does Tiger Balm work?

Tiger Balm works by tricking nerve endings with cooling and heating sensations, interrupting other signals from muscle pain or itchy insect bites.

It is much stronger than anything else on the market. While Icy Hot contains from 30%-40% active ingredients, Tiger Balm contains about 60% active ingredients.

What are the primary ingredients in Tiger Balm?

Tiger Balm contains 60% active ingredients, including natural camphor, mint oil, cajuput oil, menthol and clove oil.

While this seems like a lot of active ingredient content in the product, this does not mean that the product will have negative effects on your skin or that you will be putting a bunch of chemicals on your skin.

You can see in the ingredient list that most of the ingredients used are natural ingredients such as oils.

What are some possible side effects?

There are some side effects that can occur with this product if you are allergic to any one of the ingredients.

Get emergency medical help if you have signs of an allergic reaction: hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.

You should immediately call your doctor and stop using Tiger Balm if you experience severe burning, stinging, or irritation after using this medicine, or breathing problems after using this medicine on the chest or throat.

These two different products are both incredibly helpful pain-relieving gels that can be incredibly beneficial to your training.

Always remember to seek professional medical advice and help if you are injured.

If you are not injured, both can be used throughout your training before runs and/or workouts in order to help decrease pain and soreness.

If you tend to have more sensitive skin, I highly recommend that you use the Tiger Balm over the Icy Hot as the Icy Hot uses methyl salicylate while Tiger Balm uses a lot of very natural ingredients.

I also recommend Tiger Balm for a wider range of issues such as congestion or colds, not just athletic or arthritic pain.

If you prefer to use Icy Hot and have more sensitive skin, they do sell products that do not contain methyl salicylate and instead contain camphor which is a more naturally occurring ingredient.

Hopefully, this article will help you to better understand the similarities and differences between the two pain-relieving products to better your training.