Injury Treatment: When to use Hot or Cold Therapy

Do you know when to use heat therapy or cold therapy for an injury?
It's long been prescribed by Doctors, Chiropractors, Physical Therapists and others to use heat packs and/or ice packs for an injury. Do you find yourself forgetting which treatment to use when? If so, I will go over the reasons and applications on when it is best to use hot or cold therapy.

HEAT THERAPY

The first step to understanding which therapy to use is to understand the application's effect on the body. When you add a heat pack to the body you are increasing the blood flow to that area. With increased blood flow you can improve flexability of your ligaments and tendons, reduce muscle spasms and therefore alleviate the pain.

Since you are relaxing the blood vessel walls you do not want to expand or heat up an area that is already inflamed. If you have had a recent injury, there is a good chance that there is inflammation and stress in that area. Heat is not recommended at the onset of an injury.
When is heat therapy used? Heat works best on stiff muscles and heat packs can work on untightening those stiff muscles and increasing overall flexability. You can use heat after the initial swelling and inflammation of a recent injury are gone. Most of us have those areas in our body that stiffen up because of an old injury, age, hard work or dealing with the daily stressors in our life. We tend to have areas in our body where we hold the stress and these spots can tend to be stiff and inflexible. Heat packs work well with these stiff muscle groups and will get the blood flowing through the tissues again. A healthy muscle is one that is being fed with blood and oxygen.

The heat pack temperature should not be too hot to handle with your hands or be uncomfortable on your skin. Try heating 1-3 minutes on your heat pack to get the right temperature. The heat pack can remain on your body between 5-30 minutes. Always ask your health care provider on the duration of treatment.

COLD THERAPY

Now that we learned about heat pack therapy, what about cold pack therapy? It's interesting to note that cold therapy can also reduce muscle spasms and alleviate pain. Cold pack therapy works by reducing the swelling and the pain killing effect is caused by deadening the nerve cell activity. Studies have shown that patients who use cold therapy on injuries required less pain medication.
When you apply a cold pack to an injured area of the body (tissue swelling), the cold will do the opposite effect of heat. Remember that heat expands the walls of the blood vessels and cold will actually constrict (tighten up) the walls of the blood vessels. Cold will decrease muscle spasms by making the muscles less sensitive to being stretched.
Cold packs can be used on injured areas for 15 to 30 minutes at a time, however the length of time has been heavily debated. Ask your health care provider on duration of treatment.