Last week we published a letter from a reader who wanted the address of the company from which she had ordered Frankie Avalon Zero Pain pain reliever. She had paid $22.90 for a three-ounce container but had not received it. She had misplaced the address and all she could tell us was that the company was located in Virginia.
We couldn't help her because she had not given us enough clues.However, in response to that column we received a post card from the manager of Scheibner's Health Store in downtown Salt Lake City. She told us she had one bottle in stock, which she would sell for $22.90 to anyone who came in with a copy of our column called "Too few clues."
She also gave us the toll-free phone number for Frankie Avalon Products Inc., in Hollywood, Calif.
We called the company and it referred us to its distributor in Virginia: Telebrands Fulfillment Center in Roanoke. The customer service manager there looked up our reader's account and found that the pain reliever had been sent bulk mail a few days before we received our reader's letter of complaint.
She told us the company sent our readers two bottles because the deal was buy one, get one free.
Ingredients in Zero Pain include capsicum oleoresin in a base of wintergreen leaves extract, alfalfa extract, black cohosh extract and yucca tincture.
The health store manager said capsicum is cayenne.
The compound comes in a powder form. You rub it over aching joints when your skin is damp.
One pharmacology expert we spoke to said wintergreen has some analgesic properties.
However, he believes a consumer needs to ask himself whether a product like this is as effective as more conventional pain relievers such as aspirin.
Hearing aided by teeth?
According to the Academy of General Dentistry, a hearing aid has been developed that is placed in the mouth and uses the teeth and skull to receive sound vibrations, sending them to the inner ear.
A small transmitter, which can fit into a shirt pocket, catches the sound and sends it by radio waves to the patient's mouth, explains Dr. William Kuttler, a spokesman for the academy.
The radio waves, he adds, are then picked up by a partial denture equipped with an antenna and amplifier where a special crystal transforms the signals into vibrations that travel through the skull to the inner ear. - Associated Press.