I am the queen of heat wraps. I have an assortment of electric heating pads that I use to treat aches and pains; I love Thermacare wraps; and I have a heat therapy keyboard rest plugged in all day long. So when FuelMyBlog asked if I would like to review Acu-Life Thera Pod thermal relief, naturally I said yes! This wrap comes with a gel pack that can be heated or frozen for both moist heat and cold therapy treatments.

The Thera Pod has an adjustable strap, which makes it extremely versatile: you can wrap it around your back, over your shoulder, around your wrist – wherever you experience pain. The strap affixes with velcro and stays put. I love the fact that I can use it wherever I have discomfort, and don’t have to have a separate product for each ache; I also don’t have to fumble with cords like I do with my electric heating pads. The trade off, of course, is that this isn’t a continuous source of heat like electric pads are, so it will cool off after a while.

This is especially great as a soothing therapy for the RSI pains in my wrist – I’ve used disposable hand warming therapy patches before and they feel great, but I don’t want to spend $5 a day on them. I was wishing there was something reusable – and now there is! The only point of concern that I encountered with the Thera Pod was when I heated the gel pad in the microwave. I followed the instructions and set the microwave for 1 minute and 30 seconds, but I heard a pop about a minute into it and saw that the gel pack had inflated like a blimp. I quickly turned the microwave off and feared that the pack had burst, especially since the microwave smelt of melting plastic, but after inspecting it I saw that there hadn’t been any leaks, so fortunately I was still able to use it. My microwave is pretty powerful, and I realized that the time was suggested for a lower wattage than what I have – so just be careful of this if you also have a powerful microwave!

I love the bean bag feel of the pad, but my only wish is that it wasn’t so thick – the heat is very subtle because of all the padding, and I prefer a really intense, direct heat. However, they have to design it that way for safety reasons, because it’s very easy to get burns from these type of products; I just happen to be extremely tolerant to heat pads.

I really like this product and I can tell that it is something I will be using a lot. This fills in some of the blanks in my heat therapy routines, so I’m very pleased to have been introduced to it!