While your body, according to John Mayer, is like a wonderland, it is also a machine. And a machine of muscle, blood and skin requires the occasional tune-up. For example, it is advisable to rest after a strenuous physical activity. After a strenuous workout, microscopic tears will appear in your muscle tissues. Only rest allows the fibroblast cells to repair these tears, leading to stronger muscles.

And then there are the injuries that come with the exercise. Maybe you pulled a muscle or there’s stiffness in the joints. Sometimes you have to deal with the injuries that come with exercise. Well, different hurt requires specific cures, right? But Hydragun (the sports health brand that made... well, the Hydragun) created the Thermosleeve with different recovery modalities. You have a cold pack, a heat pack and a compression sleeve—or, as my mother would whole-heartedly favour as, a “three-for-one deal”.

Inflamed joints and muscle pain? Chuck the Thermosleeve in your freezer for an hour or two; the chill from the Thermosleeve retards blood flow to reduce swelling and inflammation, and reduces pain by slowing pain signals to the brain. Muscle stiffness or tightness? A quick 50 seconds of Thermosleeve in the microwave oven should do the trick; just wear it on your elbows, wrists, knees, calves and thighs.

Put the Thermosleeve over the affected area or wear it like a sleeve and the relief should set in in no time. I rolled my ankle around the time I wrote this and the cold was a balm. The swelling subsided and I was able to regain full use of my ankle in no time. After sneezing, a sharp pain shot out in my lower back (it was a really hard sneeze, mmmkay?). Only a warm Thermosleeve helped with the soothing (although for my sleeve, the heat tended to dissipate quite quickly).

The Thermosleeve compression sleeve retails for SGD69.

This was originally printed in the 2022 March issue of Esquire Singapore.