{"id":394,"date":"2017-07-29T12:07:04","date_gmt":"2017-07-29T16:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orthopaediclist.com\/blog\/?p=394"},"modified":"2017-07-29T12:07:04","modified_gmt":"2017-07-29T16:07:04","slug":"benefits-of-cold-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthopaediclist.com\/blog\/benefits-of-cold-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Benefits of Cold Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the team physician for all sports at a university for over twenty years, I had the opportunity to see athletic trainers perform.\u00a0 They were very good at diagnosing injuries and knowing which ones could\u00a0<\/span>be managed with therapy and which ones needed additional studies and sometimes surgical treatment.\u00a0 When injuries could be managed with therapy and modalities alone, they were able to accelerate recovery to bring athletes back to high levels of function at a rate that seemed magical.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Among the most frequent modalities was cold therapy and they used it in multiple ways.\u00a0 Naturally ice packs were a must on the sidelines and they always had them handy.\u00a0 When someone was injured icing was begun immediately to reduce blood flow with bleeding into the tissues to try to keep the swelling to a minimum.<\/p>\n

They also used cold therapy in accelerate recovery.\u00a0 One of the favorite treatments was immersion of a limb in a bucket of ice-filled water.\u00a0 They would then remove it and apply gentle heat, always being careful to not use cold too long or heat too high.\u00a0 The hyperemic response to removal from cold also occurred without the application of heat.<\/p>\n

Hyperemia is an increased blood flow that causes the skin to redden and ultimately warm.\u00a0 You can see it in people\u2019s faces when they come inside from the cold.\u00a0 You can definitely see it when one removes ice packs from the skin.\u00a0 So, not only do you get the benefit of cooling to reduce swelling but you also get the benefit of increased blood flow after removing the cooling device.<\/p>\n

Our trainers made a convincing case for another benefit of this so-called \u201ccontrast\u201d therapy.\u00a0 They hypothesized that the change in reduced blood flow from cold followed by increased blood flow from warming caused the tissues to shrink and expand with a resulting pumping effect to help drive out swelling (edema).<\/p>\n

A third benefit of cold therapy is pain relief.\u00a0 Cold applied to an injured or painful area can reduce the pain. \u00a0That not only makes the person more comfortable but allows better rehabilitation by making it less painful to move an ankle or tighten a muscle.<\/p>\n

In summary, the benefits of cold therapy are<\/p>\n