When To Use Hot Or Cold Therapy
It can really get confusing when one has a muscle strain, sprained ankle and other similar maladies and is told to use "cold therapy" and "heat therapy". The mantras are "only use cold", "use cold for first 24-48 hours", "don't use cold use warm moist heat to stop your pain". How is one to know what to do? Well let's examine what to use but more importantly why to use the hot or cold therapy.
Generally speaking immediately following acute injury the body goes into what is called an "inflammatory response" and the area gets red, gets hot and swells. During this time you don't want to inflame an inflammatory reaction and make it worse so the general rule is use cold therapy (cryotherapy). The cold actually:
- reduces the edema,
- lessens the pain,
- cools the temperature of the injured area, and
- stops the inflammatory response.
The inflammatory response is natural and helpful but it can cause more injury especially in cases such as spinal cord damage, or brain injury where the swelling causes additional injury to healthy tissues.
After the swelling has stopped, the pain subsided some, and the area cooled down, then warm, moist heat is indicated ( not dry heat ) and that occurs generally when a patient is trying to regain motion, function, movement yet, due to damaged tissues, range of motion is restricted. As the patient tries to regain full range pain inhibits it and it is now that heat helps:
- reduce pain
- increase blood flow for faster healing
- helps extend range of motion when used complemetary with exercise
