Ginger Pain Salve Recipe

Here’s how to make a warming ginger pain salve for achy joints, sore muscles, and arthritis.

ginger pain salve with beeswax and ground ginger

Ginger is one of my top favorite herbs!

It’s easily available in local stores and when taken internally, it helps ease nausea, indigestion, inflammation, motion sickness, colds/flu, and more!

Here we’re using it externally as a warming agent that improves circulation to an area and helps to ease soreness and tense muscles. This salve is best used for pain that feels better with warmth – like arthritis.

More Ginger Projects/Remedies:

14 Ways to Use Ground Ginger – over a dozen different ideas for using a bottle of ground ginger spice from your local grocery store

Easy Ginger Honey Syrup – just two ingredients to make this tasty syrup that’s especially useful for indigestion, upset stomach, motion sickness, and colds/flu

How to Make A Ginger Tincture – a more concentrated ginger herbal remedy; we add a few drops to ginger ale or a spoonful of honey when we’re not feeling well

beeswax, ground ginger, ginger infused oil, and cypress oil

Items you’ll need to collect:

Ground Ginger (Zingiber officinale) – in this salve, it’s the star of the show, but you can also add a pinch of ginger to other salve recipes for a warming, pain-relieving boost

Oil of Your Choice – I like using rice bran, sweet almond oil, apricot kernel oil, and/or sunflower oil. It’s also fine to use a grocery store oil such as olive or avocado. You can also blend different oil types together.

Additional Oil or Herb Infused Oil – you will need just 1/2 tablespoon of extra oil – this can be plain oil (like rice bran, olive, sunflower, etc), or you can use a previously infused herbal oil that’s good for various pains and strains (such as dandelion, goldenrod, arnica, comfrey, etc)

Beeswax – This turns the oil into a more solid, spreadable consistency so the salve will stay on your skin where it’s needed. If you want to make this vegan, try using about half as much candelilla wax instead of the beeswax.

Essential Oil – One of my top favorites for pain salve is cypress essential oil, because it’s warming, anti-spasmodic, and overall effective against several types of pain. Substitutions for cypress could be juniper or cedarwood. Or for a cooling effect, you could use peppermint, perhaps combined with a few drops of rosemary and/or lavender.

54 drops total of essential oil(s) is about a 2% dilution rate for this recipe.

(Use caution when buying essential oils from Amazon – most of them are falsely labeled fragrance oils or highly diluted. I purchase from Mountain Rose Herbs to ensure I get the real deal. Plant Therapy is another quality brand I use.)

Ginger Pain Salve Recipe

Besides the ingredients listed below, you’ll want two heatproof jars or containers for melting (8 ounce Ball canning jelly jars work perfectly for this recipe.) and then jars or tins for the finished salve. Or, just let the salve firm up in the melting jar, then cap and store it that way.

Ingredients

1/2 cup oil (rice bran, sunflower, olive, etc)
1 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger
1/2 tablespoon extra oil (plain or herbal infused)
0.6 ounces beeswax
54 drops essential oil (about a 2% dilution rate; I like cypress in this pain salve)

Directions for Infused Oil

First, you’ll need to make a ginger infused oil.
Place the ground ginger in a small heatproof jar or container. Add the oil and stir well.
Set the jar down into a small saucepan filled with several inches of water. This creates a makeshift double boiler.
Place the saucepan containing the water and the jar of ginger oil over a medium-low burner and allow the oil to infuse over gentle heat for about two hours, checking and stirring every 15 minutes or so.
After this time, you can go ahead and strain your oil to make salve, or you could cover the jar with a lid and tuck it away to infuse several days or weeks longer at room temperature.
To strain, line a fine mesh sieve with cheesecloth.
Once you’ve strained the oil, you should be left with about 3.8 to 3.9 ounces of oil by weight.

a small jar of ginger salve for aches and pains

Directions for the Salve

Add the 1/2 tablespoon additional oil to the freshly strained ginger infused oil. For this batch shown here, I used some oil previously infused with solomon’s seal root and comfrey, but dandelion flower or goldenrod infused oils are two more favorites.
This additional oil will put your final oil weight somewhere around 4 to 4.1 ounces of oil.
Combine the ginger infused oil with the beeswax in another small heatproof jar or container. Place that jar down into a saucepan with several inches of water and heat over medium-ish heat until the beeswax has melted, keeping a close eye as it melts.
Once the beeswax is completely melted, remove from heat.
Stir in the essential oil and pour the salve into tins or jars, or just leave the salve to cool/store in the same jar you melted it in.
Allow the salve to cool, then cover with a lid.

Shelf life of homemade salves is usually at least one year, or as long as the salve smells good.

Apply as needed for aches and pains, but avoid using on your face or around your eyes and other sensitive areas.

References & Further Reading

Anh, Nguyen Hoang et al. Ginger on Human Health: A Comprehensive Systematic Review of 109 Randomized Controlled Trials. Nutrients, 2020 Jan 6;12(1):157.

Mao, Qian-Qian et al. Bioactive Compounds and Bioactivities of Ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe). Foods 2019, 8(6), 185.

Rondanelli, Mariangela et al. Clinical trials on pain lowering effect of ginger: A narrative review. Phytotherapy Research; 2020 May 20;34(11):2843–2856.

Therkleson, Tessa. Topical Ginger Treatment With a Compress or Patch for Osteoarthritis Symptoms. Journal of Holistic Nursing; 2014 Sep;32(3):173–182.