INJURIES: TO ICE OR NOT?
"Ice it!" - is the most common thing one can hear
at the mere mention of an injury... ANY kind of injury. Whatever
it is - just put some ice on it and "Voilà!"
It's a miracle!... Or is it?
Icing was always a part of athletes’ life, but never
to the extremes it is today. It almost seems to be the most
recommended treatment for injuries, especially so in running.
One can find heat application being recommended also, but
not nearly as much as it should be and sometimes not for the
right reasons.
Icing or cold therapy with ice is recommended primarily for
numbing the pain and reducing the swelling. Since pain is
our body's signal that there is a problem and swelling is
reduced by freezing the tissue, in reality icing does nothing
more than masking the problem and deterring your attention.
Unless there is an open wound and blood needs to be stopped
or there is a need to drop the body temperature (fever, overheating),
application of ice to a human body is really not a good idea.
While majority of us agrees that icing does not carry any
healing qualities, some go as far as to state that icing helps
with overuse injuries and painful joints. To stop the overuse
injuries one should examine his technique and training, applying
an icepack won't make technical problems go away. Your joints
will do better, when treated with warmth. The reality is that
cold from ice does not penetrate deeper, than the top layer
of your muscles, directly under your skin. A human body has
to maintain a certain temperature to live. If the temperature
drops below that - the body stops functioning. So if icing
could really reach your joints to ice them, you'd be in trouble
and have some dead tissue on your hands.... um, legs.
Living tissue does better with warmer temperatures. It heals
better and faster and it weathers the distress of an injury
better. Application of ice to the injured area might temporarily
relieve you from feeling pain and freeze the tissue to stop
the blood flow to reduce the swelling, but that will also
stop the healing process. In order to heal itself, your body
needs the blood to flow through the injured area. Strangely
enough, today, it is considered a bad thing by many. But why
would anyone get in the way of healing their injuries? Why
first stop the natural healing by freezing everything with
ice and then try to artificially re-initiate it with medicine?
Why not do it right from the begining?
Next time you have an inflammation, instead of icing it,
try applying a flat-cut piece of room temperature raw potato
slice to the affected area or a warm compress soaked in apple
cider vinegar. If you wish to take any medicine - take one
aspirin. Next time you get a bruise, rub it immediately through
the pain instead of applying ice, and you will notice that
the pain associated with the bruise will lessen a lot quicker
than usual and the skin discoloration will be a lot less,
if it happens at all.
It will serve you well to always remember that icing has
a rather narrow purpose and limited usage, and you can absolutely
do without it. As a matter of fact you will help speed up
your healing if you skip the "ice therapy". Next
time you have an injury, and let’s hope that it doesn't
happen, but if it does, don't ice it. Instead take care of
it with one of the treatments described above and then take
a hot bath with apple cider vinegar or go to sauna (which
has always been hugely popular in Russian and European athletic
circles) before calling it a day.
There are many ways to deal with injuries and application
of ice is just one, small and rather insignificant step that
is not nesessary as often as it is recommended nowadays. Unless
your injury was caused by a random accident like hitting something,
or tripping and falling, your next move is to break the unproductive
cycle of repeating your mistakes and address errors in your
technique, that are causing your injuries instead of numbing
the pain and hoping the injures would just go away.
Article by Dr. Nicholas Romanov
Composed by L. Romanov
Pose
running website
PoseTech
shop |
