Are you dealing with pain and trying to figure out if you should be using ice, heat, or pain medication to help manage the pain?
Well after suffering an injury it’s always been taught to Rest, ice, compress, and elevate the injured area. However, now more research suggests that this is not an optimal treatment for promoting healing.
There is more support for avoiding ice in order to help heal an injury than using it to manage inflammation. Ice will help to slow the inflammation of an injured area. However, inflammation is a key component in healing.
Trying to avoid inflammation or limit it can result in an increase in healing time for an injury. So, this means that overusing ice to recover can actually make things take longer to heal.
Does this mean ice is bad and that you should never use it?
Not at all. It’s still okay to ice to help with pain and management of symptoms but it should only be used if you really feel that you need it.
So, now that leaves us with heating.
Using a heating pad or moist heat can be helpful to relax muscles and help with muscular discomfort. Heat also brings more blood flow to the area and can actually be helpful in promoting healing.
Just like ice you do not want to overdue heating and want to encourage movement in the area that you are treating.
If you are dealing with excessive swelling, infection, an area with active cancer, or have a loss of sensation in the treatment area you want to be careful with the use of heat.
So, in short, remember that icing can increase the amount of time it takes to heal so make sure you minimize the use of ice during recovery. Also, remember heat is most useful for muscle pain or discomfort not so much joint pain or referral pain.
