Originally Posted by
Jakedatc
most things like icy hot, tiger balm, hammer balm, ben gay etc are just skin irritants that do no physical heating/cooling to even the skin itself.
They're counterirritants, not irritants...
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/328/7446/995
Keep in mind that just because it feels warm doesn't mean there is any change in temperature. Nor is a temperature change necessary to accomplish many of the same benefits. So you can well have a mixture where one set of ingredients produce a beneficial effect while another set produce a sensation that on the surface of it explains the effect. In this case compounds that loosen a muscle fit well with an artificial sensation of warming.