Use ice to take the edge off for the first 48 hours, then switch to heat to help the muscle relax while it heals. By relaxing spasms and just being a comfort, heat (or thermotherapy) is the answer for tight muscles, trigger points, chronic back pain, fatigue and stress. It increases flexibility and circulation, and decreases overall pain signals.
When to use ice and when to use heat?
· A review of studies using ice and heat therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee found that ice packs reduced swelling and that ice massage improved muscle strength and range of movement. Heat packs had no effect on pain and swelling.
Should you use heat or ice to treat an injury?
· Use heat before activities to loosen muscles and joints and relax injured tissue. How to Use: Place the ice pack on a cloth barrier between the pack and skin, moving the pack continually. Apply directly to the injured joint or muscle, taking care not to overheat the skin. Treatment Duration: Apply for no longer than 20 minutes at a time.
What is the difference between ice and heat therapy?
· You can apply ice and heat in lots of ways. Our experts generally recommend up to 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off: Ice packs: Frozen peas …
Should I use heat or ice after exercise?
Ice or Heat? Generally the rule is to apply ice first to reduce swelling. Once initial swelling goes down heat may provide soothing relief and promote blood flow in order for your body to heal. The injuries and conditions below follow the rule of ice first, heat later. Pulled Muscles; Back Pain; Neck Pain; Knee Pain; Shoulder Pain; Muscle soreness
Why do you alternate ice and heat?
Alternating cold and heat Removing the cold causes vasodilation, as the veins expand to overcompensate. As the blood vessels expand, circulation improves, and the incoming flow of blood brings nutrients to help the injured tissues heal. Alternating heat and cold can be useful for: osteoarthritis.
When Should hot and cold treatment be used?
Heat boosts the flow of blood and nutrients to an area of the body. It often works best for morning stiffness or to warm up muscles before activity. Cold slows blood flow, reducing swelling and pain. It's often best for short-term pain, like that from a sprain or a strain.
What is the benefit of heat and ice for healing?
While heat may be beneficial in the long term to heal the muscle itself, ice may initially be the best treatment for the injury to reduce inflammation and the pain it causes. If you're sore or achy, start by applying localized heat to the area that's bothering you.
Which treatment is best for before an activity heat or ice?
Ice is a much better choice for new, acute injuries. After physical activity: Heat can loosen up muscles before physical activity, but it's never a good idea right after a workout. If you just exercised, and you're experiencing pain, you may want to ice the affected area.
Should I heat or ice first?
Rule of thumb for most injuries: Ice first, heat later. But avoid using them in tandem except as directed by a health care provider, Jake said. Most injuries cause your body to react with inflammation and swelling. Ice is used to cool down the injured joint or tissue and reduce swelling.
How long do you alternate heat and ice?
The key is to ice for 20 minutes, causing the vessels to narrow, and then heat for 15 minutes, causing the vessels to dilate. This acts as a pumping mechanism to the inflammation, pushing it away from the injured area.
Does heat make inflammation worse?
Heat can make inflammation significantly worse. Ice can aggravate symptoms of tightness and stiffness; it can also just make any pain worse when it's unwanted. Both ice and heat are pointless or worse when unwanted: icing when you're already shivering, or heating when you're already sweating.
Is heat or cold better for inflammation?
“But don't be fooled! Ice wins to shut down swelling, inflammation and pain early on where heat may actually make an injury worse.” If you're dealing with lingering injuries (older than 6 weeks) then it's okay to use heat. The increased blood flow relaxes tight muscles and relieves aching joints.
Is heat or ice better for arthritis?
For an acute injury, such as a pulled muscle or injured tendon, the usual recommendation is to start by applying ice to reduce inflammation and dull pain. Once inflammation has gone down, heat can be used to ease stiffness. For a chronic pain condition, such as osteoarthritis, heat seems to work best.
What is heat and cold therapy?
Heat therapy can utilize hot water bottles, heat pads, or warm baths. Cold therapy involves ice packs, cool water, or cold compresses. However, it can be confusing what type of aches and conditions call for hot therapy, and which ones call for cold therapy. In some cases, using both may be a successful combination.
Can you alternate heat and ice for back pain?
Use cold first and then apply heat for acute back pain. When your back pain is acute (less than a 4-week duration) and/or occurs due to a direct injury, use cold therapy first. Lowering the body temperature will help constrict the blood vessels, reduce swelling, decrease inflammation, and cause a numbing effect.
A Quick Guide That Explains When to Ice, When to Heat, When Not to, and Why
1. see also 2. Ice vs Heat 3. Ice 4. Heat 5. Depth 6. Contrasting 7. Ice & Back Pain 8. BathsThere is soooo much confusion about this issue. It’s a...
What Ice and Heat Are For
Ice is for fresh injuries, and heat is for stiff, aching muscles. Roughly. But the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of them.Ice is for...
What Ice and Heat Are Not For
Both ice and heat have the potential to do some minor, temporary harm when used poorly. Heat can make inflammation significantly worse. Ice can agg...
What About Injured Muscle? Muscle Strains?
If you’re supposed to ice injuries, but not muscle pain, then what do you with injured muscles (a muscle tear or muscle strain)? That can be a toug...
Is Ice Better Than Heat? Is Heat Better Than Ice?
Ideal uses of ice and heat are roughly equal in potency — which isn’t very potent. Neither is strong medicine. Some experiments have shown that bot...
much, Much More Hot and Cold Information
Other closely related topics: 1. PS Contrast Hydrotherapy — “Exercising” tissues with quick changes in temperature, to help with pain and injury re...
How does heat therapy help with pain?
Heat therapy increases blood flow, circulation, and muscle flexibility of an injured area. The in-creased temperature can soothe and relax aching muscles or joints.
What is heat therapy?
Heat therapy is for muscle and joint pain or stiffness. Note: Always follow advice from your healthcare provider. The information given here is meant to be general – if you receive different instructions after surgery, for example, follow those.
What is the best treatment for a cold?
Coolant sprays. There are also more intensive cold therapy techniques that many athletes use for recovery such as cryostretching (using cold during stretching exercises), cryokinetics (using cold treatments during active exercises), and whole-body cryotherapy (sitting in a cryochamber for two to five minutes).
Is cold or heat better for joint pain?
Again, as a general rule of thumb, remember cold therapy is for acute injuries involving inflammation and swelling, and heat therapy is for muscle stiffness and joint pain.
Can heat therapy cause swelling?
How NOT to use heat therapy. If you notice that the injury site is bruised or swollen, heat therapy may actually worsen the bruising and swelling (use cold therapy instead). If the injury site is an open wound, do not apply heat.
Is heat therapy hot or cold?
CAUTION: the temperature of any style of heat therapy should be warm, not hot.
Can you put ice packs on your skin?
Never apply ice or frozen gel packs directly to the skin. If you are using ice or frozen gel packs at home, wrap them in a towel before placing them on the injury site to avoid skin and tissue damage. After an injury, cold treatment should be used as soon as possible.
What is ice and heat?
What ice and heat are for. Ice is for fresh injuries, and heat is for stiff, aching muscles. Roughly. But the devil is in the details, and there are a lot of them.
What does ice do to a swollen knee?
Ice is for injuries — calming down damaged superficial tissues that are inflamed, red, hot and swollen. The inflammatory process is a healthy, normal, natural process … that also happens to be incredibly painful and more biologically stubborn than it needs to be. Icing is mostly just a mild, drugless way of dulling the pain of inflammation and taking swelling down a bit … we hope. 2 Examples: a freshly pulled muscle or a new case of IT band syndrome (which is more likely to respond than the other kind of runner’s knee, patellofemoral pain, because ITBS is superficial and PFPS is often a problem with deeper tissues).
Is cryotherapy safe?
There is soooo much confusion about this issue. It’s a shame because therapeutic icing and heating — cryotherapy and thermotherapy — are rational, cheap, easy, safe self-treatment options for many common painful problems. This article gives you a bird’s eye view of the issues, with links to other articles with as much detail as you could possibly want, especially the main icing article, the main heating article, and the please-beware-of-icing-back-pain article.
Does cooling cause pain?
If the brain thinks there’s trouble, pain ramps up. Unwanted cooling can increase the brain’s concern, and thus pain. See Pain is Weird. ⤻ That is a rare example of a particularly severe negative reaction to heat.
Can you ice a muscle tear?
If you’re supposed to ice injuries, but not muscle pain, then what do you do with injured muscles (a muscle tear or muscle strain)? That can be a tough call, but ice usually wins — but only for the first few days at most, and only if it really is a true muscle injury. A true muscle injury usually involves obvious trauma during intense effort, causing severe pain suddenly. If the muscle is truly torn, then use ice to take the edge off the inflammation at first. Once the worst is over, switch to heat.
Is heat bad for your knee?
Heat and inflammation are the other particularly bad combination. If you add heat to a fresh injury, watch out: it’s going to get worse! A physician once told my father to heat a freshly injured knee, and wow — it swelled up like a balloon, three times bigger than it had been before. And three times more painful. 6
Can ice cause burns?
But if you ice trigger points, they may burn and ache even more acutely . This mistake is made particularly often with low back pain and neck pain — the very conditions people often try to treat with ice. Heat and inflammation are the other particularly bad combination.
Why do you need to ice a wound?
Constricting blood vessels inhibits the body from allowing inflammation in the iced area. Heat dilates, or widens blood vessels, allowing more inflammation to flow to an injured or painful area. As a general rule of thumb, ice should be used if you have recently injured an area or had surgery or a procedure.
How to avoid burning skin from ice?
Some people have cold allergies, which cause ice to burn the skin. Put at least a thin towel between the ice and skin to avoid burned skin.
How long does it take for ice to burn?
Ice is definitely not as comfortable as heat, and ice will sometimes ache or burn for the first five to seven minutes of the 20-minute session.
Can you take a cold bath with vasodilation?
The body cannot sustain the vasodilation, or decrease of blood flow, to such a large area. This type of treatment will not help the injured body part, so do not waste your time in a really cold bath.
Can you use ice to treat a sprained ankle?
As an example, a full-body ice bath should not be used to treat an ankle sprain.
Does heat help with back spasms?
Heat does have its role. Heat works best in larger muscle groups. As an example, heat helps to ease back muscle spasms – as long as the spasms are not caused by a new fall or injury .
Can tendonitis heal itself?
The body continues to go through a cycle of increased inflammation even though it cannot heal these conditions on its own.
Why do we need heat?
Heat treatments should be used for chronic conditions to help relax and loosen tissues, and to stimulate blood flow to the area. Heat is a great treatment option for chronic conditions caused from old injuries or even arthritis.
How to reduce swelling in a swollen ear?
Ice helps minimize swelling. By applying an ice pack, bag of frozen vegetables or cold washcloth at the onset of an injury, swelling can be controlled, which minimizes pain. Dr. Behr says it is okay to have direct exposure to ice only if it is short-term.
What is the most common heat source?
Heating pads are the most common heat source, but even a hot, wet towel can bring relief.
Can you use heat on a limber?
Heat can be applied before participating in activities to help limber up. Dr. Behr advises against using heat treatments after activity or after an acute injury because heat can cause the swelling to worsen. Heating pads are the most common heat source, but even a hot, wet towel can bring relief.
Is ice used for pain?
Michael Behr, M.D., an orthopaedic surgeon at Piedmont, says there is really no right or wrong answer, but he says ice is typically used for acute or recent injuries, while heat is used for muscular and chronic pain.
Is heat or ice better for pain?
Heat and ice are both considered an inexpensive, easy-to-use treatment option for injuries and pain . But in the moments or even days after an injury, people often forget which choice provides the most benefit.
Is ice a cure for injury?
It’s also important to remember that heat and ice are not a cure for any injury, but are a source of comfort,” Dr. Behr says. For more healthy lifestyle tips, visit Living Better’s Health & Wellness page.
How to heat an injury?
How to Safely Heat an Injury. Heat application can be accomplished with an electric heating pad or even a heated towel removed from the dryer. If using an electric pad, choose one with a temperature control to prevent overheating and burns .
What is heat treatment?
Heat Treatment. Heat treatment is used to treat chronic conditions. It helps to relax tissues and stimulates blood flow to the affected joint or muscle. 2 Heat is typically used to treat overuse injury before an action is performed. Heat can be an effective form of pain relief if muscle tension is the cause.
Does heat help with arthritis?
Heating can help relax tissues and loosen stiff joints, making it appropriate for musculoskeletal conditions such as arthritis and old muscle strains.
What is the best treatment for orthopedic injuries?
Ice packs and heating pads are both commonly used to treat orthopedic injuries, but people are often confused about which one to use. Moreover, there is often uncertainty about how to use them safely and whether they may cause more harm than good. Joseph De Sciose / Getty Images.
How to use ice pack for a muscle injury?
How to Use. Place the ice pack on a cloth barrier between the pack and skin, moving the pack continually. Apply directly to the injured joint or muscle, taking care not to overheat the skin. Treatment Duration. Apply for no longer than 20 minutes at a time . Try to limit use to 20 minutes at a time. Never apply heat while sleeping.
Can you use heat while sleeping?
Never use heat for extended periods of time or while sleeping. Use ice after an acute injury. Use ice after activity if you have a chronic condition that is prone to inflammation. Use heat before activities to loosen muscles and joints and relax injured tissue.
Can you use heat to treat an acute injury?
Do not use heat to treat an acute injury.
How long does it take to apply ice and heat?
How to safely apply ice and heat. You can apply ice and heat in lots of ways. Our experts generally recommend up to 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off: Ice packs: Frozen peas or corn, ice cubes in a baggie or frozen gel pack. You can ice beyond 48 hours, until swelling, tenderness or inflammation are gone.
Why not use heat on acute injuries?
First of all, do not use heat on acute injuries because that extra heat can increase inflammation and delay proper healing.
How long can you ice a swollen elbow?
You can ice beyond 48 hours, until swelling, tenderness or inflammation are gone. Ice massage: Freeze water in a Dixie cup, peel back the top, and massage the tender area until it’s numb. (Best for targeted icing after injury or for areas too awkward for ice packs, like the elbow or heel).
What to do for headaches?
Who hasn’t experienced a headache of some degree? Some are lighter, easily treated with OTC pain relievers while others require some extra steps for relief. Ice can help soothe throbbing pain in your head. “Cold masks or wraps over the forehead, eyes and temples help the throbbing pain of a migraine,” says neurologist Jennifer Kriegler, MD .
Does ice help with gout?
Gout flare-ups. The one arthritis experience that ice is best for, according to Dr. Mileti, is with a gout flare-up. When the sudden onset of pain and inflammation strikes individual joints, ice can calm the flare-ups while also helping to numb the pain.
Does hot water help with arthritis?
For these instances, moist heat, like a soak in a tub or shower of warm-but-not-hot water (92-100°) helps. “Patients with more chronic osteoarthritis usually feel better with heat,” says rheumatologist Linda Mileti, MD.
Is it okay to use heat on a swollen limb?
Ice wins to shut down swelling, inflammation and pain early on where heat may actually make an injury worse.”. If you’re dealing with lingering injuries (older than 6 weeks) then it’s okay to use heat. The increased blood flow relaxes tight muscles and relieves aching joints.
Why is ice good for injury?
It is effective because it causes vasoconstriction, or narrowing of the blood vessels. The muscles contract, inflammation is lowered, and pain signals are reduced.
How does heat therapy work?
Heat therapy works in the opposite manner—it is a vasodilator, which increases circulation by expanding the blood vessels. This reduces pain and relieves cramping or aching muscles.
Is contrast therapy good for you?
For most people, contrast therapy offers an easy and cheap way to lower inflammation, loosen muscles, and enjoy natural pain relief.
How to reduce lactic acid build up?
Contrast Therapy and Sports Recovery. Many athletes are known to take ice baths after training to lower inflammation, improve circulation, and reduce lactic acid build-up. Hot and cold therapy may be effective in aiding recovery by reducing levels of both lactic acid and muscle soreness.
Can you use contrast therapy on hips?
Although the hip joint causes problems for many, it is not usually the best candidate for contrast therapy due to its size and the fact that it is often padded with fat. However, given the simplicity and cost effectiveness of hot and cold therapy, it’s worth trying contrast therapy for many conditions that cause pain.
Is hot and cold therapy safe?
Hot and cold therapy used only on the affected areas, as opposed to whole body contrasting, is generally a safe and easy treatment to carry out at home.
Do you stretch during hot therapy?
If you want to stretch your muscles, or have been advised to do so, make sure to stretch during the hot stages of the therapy.
When to apply heat to a swollen area?
When To Apply: Ideally, you should always apply heat after the any acute pain associated with the area has passed. Otherwise, you could worsen the swelling in that area.
How to make a heat wrap?
Make A Moist Heat Wrap: You can make a moist heat wrap by filling a sock with dry (uncooked) rice, stopping 2 inches from the top. Close tightly with a string, then microwave for 2 minutes. Lay this over your neck and reheat when it cools.
When should I take anti-inflammatory medication?
When To Take: You can take anti-inflammatories before you think you’ll experience pain, or right after you experience pain.
How to get rid of a swollen muscle?
Soak In A Hot Bath: For a heated soak in the tub, add 2 cups of Epsom salt to warm (not hot) water. The magnesium in the salt reduces inflammation and helps to ease the pain. It’s also an electrolyte that helps to ensure proper muscle, nerve, and enzyme function in your body.
How to relieve pain in one area?
Use Ice To Relieve Acute Pain: If you have pain in one specific area that strikes out of the blue (like your back, knee, etc.) reduce swelling & inflammation with ice.
Can you put ice on your skin?
Don’t Put Ice Directly On Skin: Use an ice pack, cold compress, or a bag of frozen vegetables wrapped in a towel. Don’t put ice directly on the skin.
