VOLTAREN Arthritis Pain Gel

Using this with a compression glove is the best way to handle pain relief.

You can toss the compression glove in the washing machine to get the gel out, if it’s an issue for you. But I just rub the gel in long enough that I don’t feel like it’s getting on the compression glove.

Works great and makes such a difference, right away.

Really helps my aching hands!!

Voltaren

My knees are very painful when I stand up after sitting or when going up or down stairs, so I’ve looked for relief. Capsaicin cream helped some, but my wife is allergic to the pepper dust as it flecks off after it dries so I didn’t continue using it. I tried Hemp cream and CBD cream and it may have helped some. My doctor suggested that I try diclofenac gel, and that pain reliever seemed to work pretty well, better than the others.

But that doesn’t mean that Diclofenac gel is a solution for everyone. Following the directions for using it is a pain. They call for measuring a 4.5” bead of gel on your knee or ankle 4 times a day. You squeeze out the 4.5” dose and rub it into your skin. It doesn’t spread smoothly or dry quickly, so after you rub it in you need to wait while it dries. For me, that meant sitting with my knees exposed for about 15 minutes. If I put pants on sooner it would be rubbed off, so all winter I had to sit around with my pants off while waiting for the gel to dry. Maybe it would be some easier wearing a skirt, but for someone at work or in an office you would have to figure out how to manage the mid-day application.

Only 6% of the diclofenac sodium NSAID gets through the skin and into your bloodstream, so if you want a full dose it is probably best to clean the leftover gel off before making a new application. The residue doesn’t wash off easily and I never bothered. Instead the dried gel flaked off like dandruff if I went to bed without showering.

Over the months I used diclofenac gel from five different sources. I used Voltaren, and Walgreens and CVS house formulations of the gel, and I used prescription tubes and a generic tube from Amazon. I haven’t discovered that the source affected its ease of application or its effectiveness, but there are differences.

The cost difference is important. Voltaren from Amazon costs about $4.83 an ounce, or 17¢ a gram. One 4.5” bead weighs about 2.4 grams, so an application of Voltaren to each knee four times a day costs about $1.36. You might want to find a cheaper formulation. The house brands from Walgreens and CVS are somewhat cheaper and the generic from Amazon is $3.16 an ounce right now. The prescription med is expensive at full price, but with my drug insurance it costs only about $1.71 an ounce, so you might consider getting a prescription.

There are other considerations in choosing. All the alternatives I used come in a metal tube that can be squeezed very flat so no gel is wasted. Voltaren comes in a plastic tube that retains its rounded shape, so I couldn’t be sure that I was getting the full last dose. See the photo for a comparison. Voltaren has a small aperture which, for me, produced a fine even diclofenac bead which was easier to apply but also reduced the size of the dose somewhat.

The bottom line is that you need to decide whether you want to deal with diclophenac, and if so if Voltaren the source you want to use.

I was recommended this cream, and I’m glad I took a chance on it. The first day I didn’t notice anything, I tried again while I was sleeping and the pain has subsided.