Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Picking the right Ted’s Product for you comes down to your preferences. The important part of using Ted's is consistency in the beginning. Resveratrol needs repeated use over a short period to build up. We recommend 3xs a day for a week initially. Then just as needed. We recommend using whichever one you know you'll be able to be consistent with.

If you are new to our products and like wintergreen, we still love our original Ted's Pain Cream. If you prefer your pain rub without any smell, the Ted's Pain Gel or the New 4x Professional Strength Cream is for you. If you have an aspirin sensitivity or know someone who does, our New 4x Professional Strength Cream is the product for you. If you love the idea of putting more resveratrol to work to fight your pain, just like Ted and Greg have always wanted to deliver and can now in this new formulation, then the New 4x Professional Strength Cream is for you.

The anti-inflammatory ingredient in Ted’s Original Pain Cream is wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate and trolamine in the unscented Ted’s Pain Gel) which is an NSAID related to aspirin (blood thinner). The concern is if you are already taking a type of blood thinner or if anything you're already taking can't be mixed with a blood thinner. Even topicals can penetrate into the bloodstream. So, the approval of your doctor is important. Many doctors aren’t concerned but it’s dosage-dependent, so we recommend checking first.

OR you can use the New 4x Professional Strength Cream, which does not contain NSAIDs.

That’s the wintergreen oil, also known as methyl salicylate. It’s related to the same ingredient in aspirin (which is why people with aspirin allergies should not use wintergreen oil).

Yeah, some people really love wintergreen oil; others really, really hate it. One of those people happens to be Ted. That’s why the new products since the debut of Ted’s Pain Cream are the Ted’s Pain Gel, an odorless roll-on, and the new 4x Professional Strength Pain Cream, which is unscented as well.

It’s a powerful antioxidant found in red grape skin and Japanese knotweed. Recently it has become popular for its claimed anti-aging properties. Ted and his research partners have been studying it for years in pre-clinical studies uncovering its pain-fighting properties.

Yes, the Ted’s Pain Gel and the 4x Professional Strength Cream is supposed to be brown.
For the Gel, you do need to shake it before application and rub the gel in after you've rolled it onto your skin. It should NOT sit, wet on the surface of your skin. It penetrates the skin best when the skin is clean, so washing first is optimal. But if you can’t wash every time, it’s not a huge problem. Just make sure you rub it in extra well. Massaging the gel into clean, dry skin and thorough absorption is vital for the resveratrol to penetrate deep enough to reach nerve pain. Here is a video of Ted himself explaining the brown color of the gel.

We are required to follow the labeling guidelines of the FDA, which does not yet recognize resveratrol for pain relief. In short, methyl salicylate is proven to fight pain; resveratrol is not. While Ted’s pre-clinical research suggests resveratrol may be an active pain ingredient, we need to put it through years of human clinical trials before we can make that claim. And that’s something we fully intend to do.

Here's some more info if you’re interested.

According to FDA guidelines, “active ingredients” are listed by concentration, and “other ingredients” are listed alphabetically. And since the FDA does not yet recognize resveratrol as an active ingredient for pain relief, we have to list it in alphabetical order.

Ted’s Pain Cream is our original product and is the best choice for most people. We made the pain gel specifically for people who either:
1) suffer from a condition like neuropathy that makes wintergreen uncomfortably warm,
2) hate the smell of wintergreen (the gel is scentless), or
3) prefer a roll on to a squeeze tube.

Patients are telling us they apply to the base of the skull, at the back of the neck, and on the temples.

The migraine mechanism is still a big puzzle, and part of why our founding migraine expert (Dr. Greg Dussor) never even considered trying it until we started hearing from customers. There is a large bundle of nerves outside the skull at the base of the neck that all become enervated during a migraine episode. Resveratrol we know can interact directly with nerves - it may be that when applied to the base of the neck, resveratrol disrupts the cascade of hyperexcitable nerve signals that lead to the migraine event itself.

No, that mintiness is entirely natural. Methyl salicylate (a close natural relative of aspirin) naturally occurs in wintergreen. It is a powerful NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory), which is why we use wintergreen in the original formulation.

Yes, it is. Our marketing team actually did recommend naming the product after Ted and not Greg, though in their defense, Ted was the lead researcher. In real life, though, Greg isn’t quite as sad as he appears in the video.

It is. We had no idea he was such a good actor.

No, that’s just a joke.

Here’s a more in-depth listing of our ingredients.

Anywhere with unbroken skin that hurts. Our survey respondents report that it’s especially good on tendinitis, muscle strains, bruises, plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel, and surprisingly (to us) migraine... Just make sure you wash your hands before rubbing your eyes or touching sensitive areas – the mintiness can be a little uncomfortable.

According to our customer data, the relief can be longer-lasting, but it also takes longer to take effect. You may notice improvement within a couple of hours. You also may notice that its effectiveness increases with every application. We recommend applying 3 times a day for the first week, then only as needed.

Many pharmaceutical companies want to rope you into using their products for life. But one of the unique things about Ted’s is that its effect seems to maximize around a week of use.

Ted made it for his own tendinitis. Our users report that it works well on muscle strains, bruises, plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel, and migraines. We even have reports of surprising relief on itches.

Here’s what we think is happening: nerves after an injury have their pain threshold set low, which is a good thing. Things that don’t normally hurt – pressure, moderate movement, etc. – cause pain. This is to protect the area while it heals. But once the injury is healed, the nerves can stay at this new, too low threshold. Resveratrol appears to help nerves at the post-injury site reset the pain threshold to the original level, so you aren’t feeling pain when you shouldn’t be. This is what we mean by “false pain.” And this is what appears to be the unique target of our cream - the nerve pain threshold.