The first time Carol caught me icing my left knee with a bag of frozen peas, she did not say anything. She just looked at the peas, then at the dish towel I had wrapped around them, then at the puddle forming on the arm of the recliner. Two days later she came home with a Vive knee ice pack wrap. That was September, a year and some change back. I have not iced with peas since.
I am 63, a retired union pipefitter out of St. Charles, Missouri. Thirty-one years of kneeling on concrete and climbing ladders put osteoarthritis in the left knee, and the orthopedist told me so at 58. I still walk Tater twice a day. I still climb in and out of a 14-foot jon boat on Mark Twain Lake. I still take the stairs in a split-level house about forty times a day. The knee is not fixed. The peas were not fixing it either. The Vive wrap made the icing part less of a nuisance, and less of a nuisance means I actually do it. Check with your own doctor or physical therapist before you start anything new. I am not one.
Cold for the puff, warm for the stiffness, and neither one needs a free hand
The Vive wrap holds three reusable gel packs against the front and back of the knee with four adjustable straps. Freezer for cold, microwave for warm, fits knee circumferences up to 21 inches, machine washable, backed by a 60 day guarantee.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →Why the Wrap Beat the Peas, Ten Times Over
The cold reaches the back of the knee, not just the top of it
A bag of peas is a lump. It sits on the kneecap and that is the end of it. The Vive wrap is built to put cold on the front and the back of the joint at the same time, and that matters if your knee swells the way mine does after a morning on the boat ramp. The puffiness behind the knee is the part the peas never got to.
Four straps hold it on when you stand up for the phone
The wrap closes with hook and loop straps, four of them, and every one is adjustable. That sounds like a small thing until you have balanced a dish towel full of peas on your knee and had the whole works slide off when you got up to answer the phone. The straps keep the wrap where you put it, and you can still bend the knee while it is on.
Three gel packs, so one is always frozen
You get three removable Arctic Flex gel packs with the wrap. One goes on the knee, one waits in the freezer, one is on the hook in the laundry room. With peas you get one bag, and the bag goes soft and stays soft until you walk it back out to the kitchen. Three packs is the difference between icing being available and icing being scheduled.
Warm in the morning, cold at night
This is the part I did not expect to use. My left knee is stiff for the first twenty minutes of the day, and a warm pack before Tater's morning walk loosens it enough that I am not coming down the stairs like a man on stilts. Later, after a long walk or a day on the water, the knee puffs and I want cold. Same wrap, same gel packs, freezer or microwave. Peas only do one job.
Twenty minutes in the recliner without holding anything
I do fifteen to twenty minutes, usually during a Chiefs game, sometimes with just the radio on. The point is that I am not sitting there with one hand pinning a bag to my leg. I set the wrap, I sit back, and I forget about it until the quarter ends. Icing you will actually do beats icing that works better on paper.
Fourteen months in, I ice after every fishing day and every long walk. Before the wrap, I iced when the knee got bad enough to scare me.
It fits a working leg, up to a 21 inch circumference
The listing says the wrap fits knee circumferences up to 21 inches. I have never measured mine and I am not going to start. What I can tell you is that it went on the first time over a knee that has hauled me up and down a split-level staircase for thirty years, and it has stayed on ever since.
The neoprene blend does not slide down your calf
The wrap is a lightweight neoprene blend with a non slip finish, and it stays put. Cheap cold packs creep. You start with the cold on the knee and end up with it around your shin. That has not happened once with this one, mostly because the straps are doing the work and not friction alone.
It goes in the washing machine, which matters more than it sounds
The wrap is machine washable, and after fourteen months of near daily use through a Missouri summer, it needed to be. I pull the gel packs out, the wrap goes in the wash, and it hangs dry on the hook. A thing you wear against your skin every day has to be cleanable, or you will quietly stop using it and not know why.
It hangs on a hook in the laundry room, in sight and in reach
This is not a product feature, it is a housekeeping decision, and it is the reason the wrap gets used. The peas lived in the back of the freezer behind the ice cream. The Vive wrap hangs on a hook by the door I walk through fifty times a day. If the thing is in front of you, you use it. Carol figured that out before I did.
It got me icing again, and that is the whole review
I am not going to tell you the wrap fixed my arthritis, because it did not and it cannot. I still have osteoarthritis in the left knee, I still do the exercises the physical therapist showed me, and my doctor still calls the shots. What the wrap did was make icing easy enough that I stopped skipping it. The peas are back in the freezer where they belong, next to the pot pies.
What I'd Skip
Two things, and then you can decide for yourself. The first is wearing it longer than you need to. I got into the habit of leaving it on for an hour while I watched the back half of a game, and all that got me was a sweaty leg and a wrap that smelled like a locker room. Fifteen to twenty minutes is what I do now, and that is plenty.
The second is expecting it to be a fix. It is a cold pack and a warm pack with straps on it. If you want to skip a product altogether, skip anything that claims more than that. And the honest drawback: the wrap is bulky. It does not fit under a pair of jeans, and it is warm to wear in July. I ice in shorts or in the recliner after my pants are off, which suits me fine and might not suit you.
The peas are for dinner. The wrap is for the knee.
Three reusable gel packs, four adjustable compression straps, hot or cold therapy on the front and back of the joint, fits knees up to 21 inches, machine washable, and a 60 day guarantee behind it. Ask your doctor or physical therapist first, the way I did.
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