Subscribe and save $10 on every jar. Free shipping on every order, cancel anytime.
Menu
👤 🔍 🛒0
Drug-Free Non-Greasy
The Old World Relief jar, clear glass with a dark wood lid and the cream heritage label
Mary Miller, herbalist and natural health researcher at Old World Healing
The 3-Phase Deep Action, explained
What arrives: the open jar with its wood lid, arnica flowers, boswellia resin, mineral crystals and pineapple
Fingertips lifting a coin-sized dollop of the cream out of the open jar
Hands massaging Old World Relief into a foot and ankle
The Old World Relief front label, photographed straight on
The four ingredients: magnesium sulfate, arnica, boswellia serrata and bromelain
The jar on a nightstand beside a brass lamp and reading glasses

★★★★★ 4.8 out of 5, with over 2,800 five-star reviews. Read them

Old World Relief

End The Morning Stiffness And The 3 A.M. Ache, Without Pills

$132 $102 on subscription
Save $10 On Every Jar

That's $34.00 a jar, shipped every 12 weeks, with free shipping.

Cancel anytime before your next ship date.

Count the half-used tubes in your bathroom drawer.

Most of them are counter-irritants, which is a polite word for a distraction.

They make your skin feel cold so your brain has something louder to listen to, and ten minutes later the ache walks right back in.

That's turning the car radio up to drown out a weird engine noise.

The engine is still broken, and you just paid to stop hearing it.

Here's the part that should annoy you: you weren't using it wrong.

Old World Relief goes the other way, past the surface, to the muscle clenched around the nerve underneath.

A coin-sized dollop, massaged in for thirty seconds, morning and bedtime.

Most people describe a slow warmth at about fifteen to twenty minutes, and it isn't a menthol hit.

  • Drug-Free
  • No Menthol Burn
  • Non-Greasy
  • Made In An FDA Registered US Facility
  • One Jar, About A Month
  • Twice Daily
  • Free Shipping
  • 90-Day Guarantee

How Do You Want To Buy?

How Many Jars?

The "Save $2" and "Save $15" flags mean against buying that many jars one at a time, and they hold on both purchase types.

Here's the honest timeline, and we'd rather you had it before you buy than after.

The warmth usually turns up the first evening, and the deeper change is a two to three month job.

That's why three jars is the default here, and it's the same reason the guarantee runs ninety days instead of thirty.

Save Up To 63% (Today Only)

Free Shipping And A 90-Day Guarantee

Free Shipping | Cancel Anytime | No Contract

Every Order Includes:

  • 3 Jars, About Three Months Of Twice-Daily Use$132 $102
  • Every Ingredient Tested For Purity And PotencyIncluded
  • Free Shipping On Every OrderIncluded
  • 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee, And You Keep The JarIncluded
  • Delivery Before You Scrape The BottomOn Subscription
  • Cancel Or Pause In One ClickOn Subscription
  • Drug-Free
  • No Menthol Burn
  • Non-Greasy
  • Low Herbal Scent
  • Warmth That Sinks In
  • Coin-Sized Dollop
  • FDA Registered US Facility
  • Tested For Purity And Potency

  • Supports joint and muscle comfort right where you rub it in*
  • Helps ease the everyday tightness that builds up in a clenched muscle*
  • Supports a calmer, more settled feeling in the area over time*
  • Supports comfortable movement in the hands, knees and feet*

Every one of those is an ingredient-level claim, and the research behind each ingredient is cited further down this page, caveats included.

  • Magnesium Sulfate, the Epsom mineral, in a skin-penetrating concentration
  • Arnica Montana extract
  • Boswellia Serrata extract, the resin people know as Indian Frankincense
  • Bromelain, the enzyme from pineapple

Plus a handful of supporting plant-powered botanicals that have been part of traditional Amish remedies for generations.

Adults whose hands, knees, feet or back have started running the day instead of the other way round.

Old World Relief is a good fit if you've already tried the drugstore cooling creams and found they wear off before you get to the car.

It's a topical you rub on, so it isn't a substitute for anything your doctor has you taking.

  • Warm a quarter or coin-sized dollop between your fingers
  • Massage it into the area for thirty to sixty seconds, until it's absorbed
  • Twice a day, morning and bedtime, or whenever the ache flares
  • Get dressed straight after, because the cream sinks in instead of sitting on top

One jar is about a month at twice-daily use, and that pace is deliberate.

The evening application is the one people notice first, because that's when the muscle has been clenched all day.

The morning one is the one that matters over months, and skipping it is the most common reason a jar underperforms.

  • Made in an FDA registered facility in the United States
  • Every ingredient tested for purity and potency
  • Crafted in small batches

A subscription costs $10 less per jar than buying the same number of jars once, and it bills that same price from the very first order.

The 1-jar plan renews at $39 every 4 weeks, the 2-jar plan at $76 every 8 weeks, and the 3-jar plan at $102 every 12 weeks.

There's no introductory rate to expire, because we don't run one.

Shipping is free on every order, and you can pause, change the delivery gap or cancel from your account in one click.

Prefer not to subscribe?

Pick One-Time Purchase above, and the same three quantities are $49, $96 and $132.

Jump To... What's Inside The Research How It Works Compare Stories Reviews
Old World Relief jar

Old World Relief

★ 4.8 | Twice Daily | Free Shipping
Save Up To 63% (Today Only)

What's Inside: Four Ingredients, And The Job Each One Has

A long ingredient list looks impressive and tells you nothing.

Here are the four we'll defend, with the research on each one and the parts of that research that don't flatter us.

Coarse translucent magnesium sulfate crystals in macro detail

Magnesium Sulfate

Phase 2, at the muscle

The Epsom mineral your grandmother poured into a hot bath, here in a concentration built to move through skin rather than sit on it.

Inside The 3-Phase Deep Action it's the Phase 2 ingredient, the one aimed at the muscle that won't let go.

In a feasibility study, forty women used a transdermal magnesium preparation twice daily for four weeks and reported improved quality-of-life scores at both two and four weeks.3

Straight talk: that was a small pilot study, its own authors called for larger trials, and it used magnesium chloride rather than the sulfate in our jar.3 Worth knowing either way: magnesium intake runs low in a lot of ordinary diets.7

Fresh yellow arnica montana flowers with shaggy petals

Arnica Montana

Phase 3, circulation

The mountain daisy that has been going into rubbing balms in Europe for a few hundred years, long before anybody could explain it.

It's here for Phase 3, supporting circulation to the area you just worked the cream into.

In a randomized, double-blind study, 204 adults used either an arnica gel or an NSAID gel for 21 days, and the arnica gel came out not inferior on pain and hand function.1

Straight talk: that trial tested an arnica gel of its own, not this cream, and we're not going to tell you the two are interchangeable.

Amber-golden boswellia serrata resin tears beside a strip of bark

Boswellia Serrata

Phase 3, joint enzymes

Indian Frankincense, tapped as resin from the tree, and one of the most studied joint botanicals there is.

It's the Phase 3 ingredient aimed at the enzymes involved in joint discomfort.

A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 7 randomized controlled trials covering 545 patients and found reduced pain and stiffness with improved joint function.2

Straight talk: most of that research is on boswellia taken by mouth, at doses no cream matches, so we claim the ingredient and never the dose.

A cut pineapple showing its fibrous golden core beside a dish of pale enzyme powder

Bromelain

Phase 3, swelling proteins

The enzyme that makes pineapple sting your tongue, which is a clue about what it does to protein.

In Phase 3 it's the one working on the proteins involved in swelling.

In an open study of otherwise healthy adults with mild acute knee pain, bromelain reduced pain and stiffness scores by 41% to 59% depending on the dose taken.4

Straight talk: an open study has no placebo group, which makes it the weakest of the four references on this page, and we'd rather say that than let you assume otherwise.

Plus a handful of supporting plant-powered botanicals that have been part of traditional Amish remedies for generations.

The Research, Including The Parts That Don't Go Our Way

Four ingredients, four pieces of human research, and one rule we hold to.

Every study below is a study of an INGREDIENT, never of this cream, and we never claim our amount matches a studied amount.

204 adults in a randomised, double-blind study of an arnica gel against an NSAID gel

Arnica, head to head, for 21 days.

204 adults, randomised and double-blind, arnica gel against an NSAID gel, and the arnica gel came out not inferior on both pain and hand function.1

Boswellia, 7 trials, 545 patients.

A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis found reduced pain and stiffness and improved joint function across the pooled trials.2

Bromelain, dose by dose.

In an open study in otherwise healthy adults with mild acute knee pain, pain and stiffness scores fell 41% to 59%, and the bigger effect came with the bigger dose.4

No placebo group, so it's the softest evidence on this page.

40 women in a four-week feasibility study of a transdermal magnesium preparation

Magnesium, applied to the skin, twice a day.

40 women, four weeks, improved scores at two weeks and at four.3

This one is a pilot, the authors said so themselves, and they called for larger trials.3

It also used magnesium chloride, and our jar uses magnesium sulfate.

We're keeping it on the page with those two sentences attached, rather than quoting the result and hoping you don't check.

Nobody has tested this finished cream.

There's no trial on Old World Relief itself, and until there is, we won't say "clinically proven" about this jar.

How It Works: The 3-Phase Deep Action

The short version of why the ache keeps coming back, and what a cream has to do to get anywhere near it.

Why resting it doesn't fix itWhy resting it doesn't fix it
The fist that never unclenchesThe fist that never unclenches
Why the pill only turns the volume downWhy the pill only turns the volume down
What a counter-irritant actually isWhat a counter-irritant actually is
Mary Miller, herbalist and natural health researcher at Old World HealingMary Miller reads the arnica trial out loud
Hands working a coin-sized dollop of the cream into a kneeThe thirty seconds most people rush

First, what's actually going on under there

In 2000, the Italian researcher Claudio Franceschi gave a name to something that had been sitting in the data for years, and he called it inflammaging.5

The short version: as we age, the body starts running a low-grade alarm signal that never quite switches off.5 6

Luigi Ferrucci at the National Institute on Aging has called it a pillar of aging.6

Here's the part that matters to your hands at six in the morning.

That constant signal keeps muscles contracted, and a contracted muscle is a fist that never unclenches.

A muscle held like that presses down on the nerves running underneath it.

Squeezed nerves send signals, so you get the burning, the tingling and the ache, and the whole loop feeds itself.

Now you know why the pill doesn't reach it.

An oral painkiller goes down through digestion, into the blood, up to the brain, and it works on your brain's PERCEPTION of the signal.

The pill turns down the volume on your brain's ability to hear what your body is screaming.

The muscle is still clenched. The nerve is still squeezed.

"I'm not a doctor, and none of this is a diagnosis.

I'm describing a process, not telling you what you have.

Take anything new to your own doctor first, and take this cream to them too."

And second, why the drugstore cream doesn't reach it either

Most topicals in that aisle are counter-irritants, and the sensation on your skin is the entire point of them.

A counter-irritant creates a cooling or a warming sensation on the surface of your skin, and your brain has something new to pay attention to.

The distraction lasts a few minutes, and nothing underneath it has changed.

That's the car radio again, turned up over the engine noise.

The three phases, in order

1Deep Penetration.

Built around transdermal delivery, which means molecules small enough to move past the surface of the skin toward the muscle tissue and nerve endings underneath.

This is the phase the counter-irritants skip entirely, because a sensation on the skin never has to go anywhere.

2Nerve Calming and Muscle Release.

Magnesium sulfate reaches the muscle and blocks the calcium channels holding it clenched.

The muscle relaxes, the pressure comes off the nerve, and the signalling quiets down.

That cool, loosened feeling people describe at ten to twenty minutes is the muscle actually letting go.

3Inflammation Reduction.

Arnica supports circulation into the area you just worked on.1

Boswellia targets the enzymes driving joint discomfort, and bromelain goes to work on the proteins involved in swelling.2 4

The 3-Phase Deep Action: past the surface, the muscle lets go, settling the area down

The 3-Phase Deep Action

Break the loop at any one phase and you've done something.

Break it at all three and the muscle lets go, so your brain finally stops getting the same message on repeat.

Compare: What's Actually In That Aisle

Four common answers to the same ache, and what each one is really built to do.

  Old World Relief Drugstore cooling cream Oral pain reliever Single-herb rub
Works where you rub it, not through digestion✔✔✘✔
Built around a counter-irritant sensation✘✔✘Sometimes
Magnesium sulfate in the formula✔✘✘Rarely
Four actives with different jobs✔✘✘✘
Warmth that sinks in rather than a cold hit✔✘✘Varies
Nothing to swallow✔✔✘✔
Cites the ingredient research on the page✔✘✘✘
90-day money-back guarantee✔VariesVariesVaries

The comparison columns are generic product categories, not named brands.

Formulas vary from jar to jar, so read your own label.

Old World Relief's column is taken straight from its own formula.

Five Things People Think Right Before They Don't Buy This

We'd rather answer these than let them sit there.

"It's another cream that won't work for MY pain."

Fair, and you've earned that suspicion the expensive way.

What's different here isn't the promise, it's the phase the drugstore creams skip.

A counter-irritant is built to be felt on the skin, and this is built to move past it.

You've got ninety days to find out which one you bought.

"Natural means weak. If a prescription didn't fix it, how is a cream going to?"

A pill has to get through your stomach and into your blood before it can work on how loudly your brain hears the signal.

Old World Relief goes onto the spot instead, and it never has to survive your digestion at all.

The four ingredients each have human research behind them, printed up above with the caveats attached.

"It'll smell like a nursing home and feel greasy."

The scent is low, clean and herbal, not the medicinal wallop you're bracing for.

It absorbs in about thirty to sixty seconds, which is why you can get dressed straight after.

"How is this different from the blue tube I already own?"

The blue tube is a counter-irritant.

A counter-irritant makes your skin feel cold so your brain listens to that for a few minutes.

Then the distraction wears off and the muscle underneath is exactly where you left it.

"It's too expensive, and honestly, I think I'm too far gone."

The too-far-gone half of that sentence is the one worth answering first.

Nobody here is going to tell you what this jar will do for you, because we don't know you.

What we can tell you is that ninety days of finding out costs you nothing.

On subscription a jar runs $34 to $39, which is roughly a dollar a day for something you use twice.

And if ninety days of it does nothing for you, you get every dollar back and you keep the jar.

More than 47,000 jars have gone out the door, and the same ninety days sits behind every one of them.

Try It For 90 Days, And Keep The Jar Either Way
47,000 plus jars sold, a 4.8 rating and over 2,800 five-star reviews

A Note On Proof

Everything below this line is real, and here's exactly what real means.

More than 47,000 jars have gone out the door.

The rating is 4.8, with over 2,800 five-star reviews.

Every quote on this page is a customer's own words, copied across without tidying.

We left the lukewarm ones in on purpose, because a wall of perfect reviews tells you nothing.

What Customers Actually Wrote

Margaret Brammer in her garden ★★★★★

"I call it my little miracle in a jar"

"within 30 minutes... a gentle warmth spread through my hands. I call it my little miracle in a jar. For the first time in years I'm sleeping through the night without having to shake my hands out at 3 a.m."

Margaret Brammer, 82, Santa Rosa CA

Older hands working in dark garden soil beside a trowel and a seedling tray ★★★★★

"No strong smell, no burn"

"within 20 minutes the stiffness in my knuckles eases. No strong smell, no burn. Just gentle relief that lets me get back to what I love."

Laura Taylor, 62, Sonoma CA

Todd Rewick ★★★★★

"I feel like myself again"

"I feel like myself again. Not like a guy who has to ask his wife to open the jar of pickles."

Todd Rewick, Vacaville CA

What Makes Old World Relief Different

Walk down the pain aisle and pick up almost anything on the shelf.

Most of it works the same way, and almost nobody says so out loud.

Your skin goes cold, your brain listens to that for a few minutes, and then the ache walks right back in.

You didn't fail at using it correctly.

You bought a distraction with a scent, and nobody told you that's what it was.

A whole aisle got built on ten minutes of cold skin, and the people it let down went home and blamed their own bodies.

The cooling cream A generic blue and white cooling pain gel tube on a bathroom shelf
  • Works by DISTRACTING the brain with cold
  • Sits ON the skin and stops there
  • Fades in about TEN MINUTES
  • Announces itself to the whole ROOM
  • Never explains WHY it fades
  • Leaves you believing the problem is YOU
Old World Relief The Old World Relief jar
  • Built for TRANSDERMAL delivery, past the surface
  • MAGNESIUM SULFATE aimed at the muscle that won't let go
  • ARNICA, BOSWELLIA AND BROMELAIN on three different jobs
  • Warmth that SINKS IN, with no menthol burn
  • The four ingredient studies CITED on this page
  • The pilot-study caveat PRINTED right beside the result
Mary Miller, herbalist and natural health researcher at Old World Healing

"A cooling cream isn't relief, it's a distraction with a scent.

The old balms were rubbed in and left to work, and the good ones never stopped at the skin.

That's the whole idea we're trying to bring back."

Mary Miller

Herbalist and Natural Health Researcher, Old World Healing

What We Stand For

The jar on cream linen with dried arnica flowers, resin tears and mineral crystals

Made The Way The Old Remedies Were Made

Before the pain aisle existed, the remedy for a working body was a balm somebody rubbed in by hand.

Those recipes had to work or they died with the family that kept them.

We started Old World Healing to bring the good ones back, in small batches, and to hold every one of them up against the modern research instead of hiding from it.

We'll Hand You The Weak Spots Ourselves

The magnesium study on this page is a pilot, and its own authors asked for larger trials.3

The bromelain study had no placebo group.4

Nobody has ever run a trial on this finished cream, and we'd rather tell you than have you work it out later and wonder what else we skipped.

A handwritten note listing what we claim and what we don't
A kraft shipping box open on a kitchen counter with the jar and an instruction card inside

Delivered Before You Scrape The Bottom

A jar is about a month at twice-daily use, so the gap between jars is exactly where a twice-daily habit falls apart.

On subscription the next one is already moving before you scrape the bottom of this one.

Change the delivery gap, pause it, or cancel from your account in one click, with no fee and no phone call.

Old World Healing 90 day money-back guarantee seal

90 Days, Then Your Money Back

If Old World Relief isn't doing anything for you, write to us within 90 days of your order and we'll refund you in full.

You don't need to send the jar back, and the refund holds whether you bought once or started a subscription.

Ninety is deliberate, because the deeper change is a two to three month job and a thirty-day window would ask you to judge it too early.

Save Up To 63% (Today Only)

Questions We Get Asked

A slow warmth that sinks in, usually somewhere around fifteen to twenty minutes.

It isn't the cold menthol hit you get from the drugstore tubes, and it isn't a burn.

Plenty of people describe the area feeling loosened rather than numbed.

That cream is a counter-irritant, which means it works by making your skin feel something so your brain listens to that instead.

The sensation fades in a few minutes and nothing underneath it has changed.

Old World Relief is built around getting past the surface instead, which is Phase 1 up above.

A pill travels through your digestion, into your blood, and up to your brain, where it works on how loudly you hear the signal.

The clenched muscle and the squeezed nerve are still exactly where they were.

Old World Relief goes onto the spot instead of around the houses.

A quarter or coin-sized dollop per area, massaged in for thirty to sixty seconds until it's absorbed.

Twice a day, morning and bedtime, or whenever the ache flares up.

About a month at twice-daily use on one or two areas.

If you're working on hands and knees and feet, it'll go faster, which is the honest reason most people end up on two or three jars.

Judge the warmth the first evening.

Judge the rest at two to three months, because that's the window where the difference actually builds.

Ninety days of guarantee exists for exactly that reason.

It has a low, clean, herbal scent.

It isn't the harsh medicinal smell you're bracing for, and it isn't a strong menthol.

It absorbs in about thirty to sixty seconds and leaves no sticky residue.

Get dressed right after, that's how it's meant to be used.

The four ingredients we make claims about are magnesium sulfate, arnica, boswellia serrata and bromelain, alongside supporting botanicals from the traditional remedies.

What people describe is a gentle warmth rather than a cold menthol hit, and that's deliberate.

Read the label on your own jar for the full declaration.

Yes. It's a topical cream you rub on, not a pill and not a prescription.

Hands, knees and feet are the three people ask about most, and it goes on shoulders and the low back the same way.

Work it into the muscle around the joint, not just the joint itself, because the muscle is the part doing the clenching.

Ask your doctor first, and show them the jar.

Old World Relief is a topical cream and it isn't a substitute for anything you've been prescribed, and we'd never tell you to stop something your doctor put you on.

Always read the label on your own jar before you start.

Magnesium sulfate in a skin-penetrating concentration, arnica montana, boswellia serrata and bromelain, plus supporting plant-powered botanicals from the traditional Amish remedies.

The research behind each of the four is cited up above, with the caveats attached.

In an FDA registered facility in the United States, in small batches, with every ingredient tested for purity and potency.

No, and we'd be lying if we said it did.

That's the whole reason the guarantee runs ninety days and you don't have to post the jar back.

No. One-Time Purchase sits right beside Subscribe & Save in the buy box, and neither one is hidden.

The subscription costs $10 less per jar and it bills that same price from the first order, because we don't run an introductory rate that jumps later.

From your account, in one click, any time before your next ship date.

You can pause a shipment, widen the gap between deliveries, or cancel outright with no fee and no phone call.

Ninety days, full refund, and you keep the jar.

That's the whole answer.

Old World Relief Reviews

★★★★★
4.8 out of 5

Over 2,800 five-star reviews · More than 47,000 jars sold

LKLinda K.Verified ✔

"I was able to take the braces off"

"I noticed the first couple of times using this cream it is really good. I was able to take the braces off."

BEBarbara E.Verified ✔

"My knee feels so much better than previously"

"When I get out of bed in the morning I am stiff all over so I need to get my balance but my knee feels so much better than previously!!!"

PSPeter S.Verified ✔

"Yes it's helping"

"My left knee is feeling a lot better! ... Yes it's helping."

DBDebra B.Verified ✔

"At first didn't notice much difference"

"I've been using the cream for two weeks. At first didn't notice much difference but the hints that come by email really help."

SSharonVerified ✔
★★★★★

"The product has eased the pain greatly"

"I have been using the cream for a week now; although the stiffness in my knee is still present, the product has eased the pain greatly. I have been pleasantly pleased so far. Thank you."

JGJean G., Willow AKVerified ✔
★★★★★

"I like how it feels right away"

"I've used it 4 times since receiving it Friday evening. I like how it feels right away and can't wait for the longer use results."

Notice that Debra hadn't felt much at two weeks, and Sharon still had the stiffness.

We could have hidden both of those and shown you six perfect ones instead.

Yes, I Want The Warmth That Sinks In

The Old World Healing Library

Read the long version of the alarm that won't switch off, the fist that never unclenches, and why the cooling cream in your bathroom was never going to reach it.

Read The Full Story