With all the athletic injuries today, which is better to treat with, heat or ice? Lets take a sprained ankle for example. At the onset of injury a large amount of inflammation is created to help protect the now injured ankle and swelling is present. You should always use ice instead of heat to treat an acute injury. ALWAYS! Here is the reason why.

Heat will increase the inflammation thus slowly down the healing process. Ice will decrease the inflammation and actually speed up more blood flow at a much deeper level than heat ever will. So the next time you turn that ankle, take a bag of frozen veggies, (which work great as an ice pack because they will mold to the tissue without leaving air pockets) and place them on the injured area for about 15 to 20 minutes, getting it to the numbing effect. Keeping the ice on any area too long can cause damage. The idea is just to get it numb and then take the ice off. The physiology of the procedure is to trick the brain into thinking the area being iced is reaching the level of frostbite. When this occurs, the brain then forces new blood carrying oxygen and nutrients to the injured area. How does this help, you ask? Simple.

When there is injury, such as a sprained ankle, you have injured cells. The cells carry no nutrient value to the healing process of that ankle. So it's extremely important to flush these injured cells out and replace them with good vital cells. This is done when and only when the ice is being used consistently and for the time period indicated. When the ice is removed, this is the half-way point of the healing process of ice. Just cooling the tissue will not work. You must get it numb. But be smart. If you are cold sensitive, take a damp t-shirt, and place against the skin applying ice on the outside for the first 5 minutes, then remove the t-shirt and replace the ice against the injured ankle for about 10 to 15 more minutes. You should ice at least one time per day for at least 5 days. If you ice more than once per day, make sure you leave the ice off at least 2 hours between each application.

If you have any questions, please e-mail me.  In the next article, I'll be talking about "How important is protein to the athlete"?

Your sports therapist
Stephe Worley